


Revelations

by thisiszircon



Series: The Moment of Awakening [13]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25571371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: Following a very-near-death experience, Ace has been reminded of a dark moment in her past.  Dealing with it would be tricky at the best of times.  Unfortunately, her unresolved feelings for the Doctor are only making matters worse.
Relationships: Seventh Doctor/Ace McShane
Series: The Moment of Awakening [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/308457
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to my invaluable beta-reader and editor, [Nemo the Everbeing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing).

Ace was a nervous wreck. (Self-diagnosed.)

She couldn't do anything. She was _frightened_ to do anything. Physical stuff? No thank you, definitely not. Her heart had required a restart; taking it easy was the common-sense thing to do. Mental activities? Bugger off. That meant thinking, and thinking was terrifying.

Some emotional processing, perhaps? Worse. God, so much worse. Worst of all.

It was as well that the days following their escape from the stricken space-station had not presented them with a problem to solve. Monsters; invasions; despots: the Doctor would have been on his own. Right now Ace was beyond useless.

Some space-adventurer she'd turned out to be.

And fine, so maybe she had an excuse. She'd suffocated. Her heart had stopped beating. That was a hell of a thing to wrap your head around. But she wasn't the only person ever to suffer a temporary lapse of heartbeat. She wasn't even a rarity. She'd seen _Angels_. All those bustling medics racing into curtained alcoves with their gooed-up electrodes, shouting 'Clear!' What had happened to her was scary, but hardly unique.

The problem was that she couldn't seem to talk herself out of the reaction she was having. Before the Doctor had jump-started her heart on the floor of the console room, she'd never considered herself a hypochondriac. Since then, however, she'd taken to monitoring her body with obsessive attention. Any tiny twinge or pull around her chest brought with it a surge of anxiety.

She had trouble sleeping, too. Every time the lights went out, all she could hear was her own heartbeat. She couldn't ignore it. She nurtured it, analysed it, felt little bursts of terror if the time between beats seemed excessively long. She measured her pulse against her bedside clock and made notes of the result. And of course the more anxious she became, the more her heart raced. She was only too familiar with the symptoms of a panic attack, but even so, she began to diagnose her nervous tension as the prelude to cardiac arrest. When exhaustion finally allowed her to drop into a doze, her brain would throw a switch and wake her up: a jerky, unsettling awakening, like when you dream you're falling. It was as if her brain didn't trust her to sleep.

The lack of rest and constant agitation forged a searing headache. She couldn't go to the medical bay to deal with it, because the ship dispensed medicine in accordance with a scan of the patient, and the last thing she needed was documented, scientific confirmation that her brain was fucked. Thus, she had to make do with her limited stash of paracetamol. The pills, alas, could only take the edge off. The headache lodged itself somewhere between the back of her head and her temples, and settled in for the long haul. 

As well as the stress of her physical resurrection, Ace was dealing with the aftermath of her escape-pod dream. The details of that dreamscape had faded away, lost in their own tangle of incoherency, but somehow this served only to lend clarity to the one thing she could no longer avoid:

At sixteen years of age she had given her virginal body to a man in the hope of procuring money and assistance from him.

For so many years she had trained herself not to think of that one specific moment in her life. Now, at last, the moment had caught up with her. Maybe she was being haunted by the memory, or maybe it had hunted her down, or maybe she'd taken a suicidal leap towards it. It didn't matter. The reunion was a painful one: Ace and her darkest hour, together again.

She tried to make excuses for herself. It had only happened once, after all. She'd been young. She'd been cast adrift in an unfamiliar place and time. Mistakes were forgivable. Over and over she told herself that it was done with, in the past. It couldn't be changed; she should move on.

Still, she found herself turning the heat up each time she showered; she never seemed to feel clean anymore. Sometimes, in the quiet moments – and there were a lot of those – she could sense a rasp of heavy breathing near her ear and the scent of stale alcohol in the air. Her heart-rate would spike in panic. She would feel the urge to run, or punch, or do something to distract herself, only she couldn't do that because she was halfway convinced that any exertion would see her heart seize up again.

The longer this went on, the worse it got. She reached the point where the notion of her heart giving up the ghost no longer seemed like such a terrible thing. The thought came to her quite suddenly, in the small hours of the TARDIS night as she sat up in bed, head pounding, nerves jangling, heart racing, trying not to cry because she couldn't stop herself from feeling this way and she was tired of it. So insanely tired.

Dying was a better option than constant pain and anxiety and self-loathing. Wasn't it?

As soon as the thought took shape, however, she flinched from it. She felt something inside herself break free: something stubborn, something that had been smothered by recent events. It told her that she'd never gone down without a fight, and she wasn't going to start now. Whatever had happened, she wasn't going to be bullied. Certainly not by her own bad memories.

Thus it was that, almost a week after her brief flirtation with pulseless-ness, Ace made her decision. Enough was enough. She was not going to hide anymore, and if this choice made her heart go out with a bang, so be it. That had to be better than a whimper.

So she went to the pool and swam steadily for half an hour. Then she went to the gym and worked through some of the slow, graceful moves she'd picked up from Li Renxiang in nineteenth century Shanghai. In the shower, afterwards, she forced herself to turn the temperature down to just above tepid.

She went to the lab and reviewed her stocks of Nine-A. It helped, to concentrate on something different for a while. She tidied up older projects, transcribed notes from wayward Post-its into the lab journal she'd tried to establish, attached labels to the products she could remember producing and safely destroyed the ones she could not.

When she found herself back in her quarters after this busy morning of activity, considering the bundle of clean laundry that most people would fold and put away but Ace tended to simply dip into as necessary, she had to pause. She was – she admitted it to herself – wondering how long the process of matching clean socks into pairs might continue to distract her.

She turned away from the bundle, went to sit on her bed, and finally let herself think about why the Doctor had been avoiding her for seven days.

~~~

After some serious thought, Ace had two working theories.

Theory 1: the TARDIS had sniffed out a problem, and she'd been so caught up in her own issues that she hadn't even noticed. Perhaps the Doctor was busy saving the galaxy. There could still be a problem with the creature that had attacked the space-station: the one from the nasty higher dimensions. Or something else could be going on. It was a big old universe out there. Shit happened.

Things to support the theory: it would explain the Doctor's distraction. And, of course, he had a habit of not telling her things, especially when they were important. He might even be protecting her from the stress of galaxy-saving given her recent brush with death.

Things that _didn't_ support the theory: the TARDIS was navigating the vortex rather than on some planet. Each time Ace checked the console room, the time rotor rose and fell implacably but the Doctor was absent. Nor was he in the library, the drawing room, the dayroom, the kitchen, nor any of the places in the TARDIS where the two of them tended to interact. So if he was all tied up in keeping the universe safe from monsters, he'd picked an odd place to do it from.

Which led her to:

Theory 2: the Doctor had reacted badly to the near-miss on the space-station and was trying to work out what to do about it. They had, after all, come close to giving a powerful being a foothold in their universe. In ensuring that the threat was averted, both of them had come close to death.

Things to support the theory: people needed some recovery-time after a near-death experience. Ace liked to think the Doctor cared about her. Watching her die and then bringing her back had probably been difficult for him.

Things that _didn't_ support the theory: the situation on the space-station had mirrored pretty much every adventure they'd ever had together. They always had near-misses. They always ended up coming through. That escape-pod had by no means been the first time Ace's life had been threatened. So what was so different this time around?

Theory 2's unlikelihood sent her back to theory 1. Theory 1's complete lack of detail sent her along to theory 2. And so on, until a kind of mental dizziness ensued.

(She refused, point blank, to consider that her revelation about Glitz was the problem. The Doctor didn't know the gory details about what had happened on Iceworld, and Ace was happy for this to remain the case. And even if he _had_ somehow worked it out, maybe thanks to that inconvenient TARDIS connection between their minds, why would he even care? He was an alien. He had no interest regarding what she did or did not do with her body. The idea that her misstep at sixteen years of age had filled him with disgust, to the extent that he couldn't even look at her anymore: no, that was ridiculous. It wasn't worth considering. At all. And Ace was profoundly irritated by the amount of consideration she had to invest in it, simply to discount it. Which she did. Obviously. Point blank.)

She needed another theory.

Scrap that. She needed a proper answer.

Ace stood up and went to the console room. It was, of course, empty.

"Where is he?" she demanded of the ship.

She wasn't expecting a reply. So when a screen lifted of its own accord on the systems panel of the console, and it blinked on and offered her an image, she was rather taken aback.

~~~

Ace stepped through the roundeled door into sunshine and the scent of cherry blossom. The TARDIS had decided that it was spring here in the orchards. Tomorrow it might be time to harvest the fruit. Or mid-winter, with ice sparkling on branches and snow thick and soft on the ground. (Ace suspected the TARDIS of a deep-rooted rebelliousness when it came to any notion that time should occur in a sequential way.)

She hadn't visited the orchards for a long time. Months, perhaps. When she felt the need to enjoy one of the TARDIS's landscapes – to feel fresh air on her face, even inside a ship that navigated the dimensional soup of the vortex – she tended to pick the craggy mountains, with their rough edges and the cool scent of pine and all those climb-and-abseil opportunities. The orchards were nice enough, she supposed, but a bit domesticated for her taste.

Ace glanced back over her shoulder at the door she'd just come through. It looked as though it was set into the larger wooden door of an outbuilding. She smiled at this gentle deception, offered as it was for the sake of verisimilitude. Then she turned to the pathway into the trees and set off, carrying the tea-tray she'd prepared.

The tea was a bit of a manipulation on her part, although she told herself it didn't breach the 'no more game theory' agreement. Whatever it was that had made the Doctor hide himself away, the fact remained that he didn't want to see her. Well, fine. As soon as Ace had ascertained that his reasons were nothing _she_ needed to worry about, he could have all the distance he liked. But first she needed to learn what those reasons were. To do that, she needed to prevent him scarpering as soon as he caught sight of her. Hence the tea. If someone takes the trouble to bring you a cup of tea then you cannot ignore the offering and run off. Not without being rude.

The Doctor had it in him to be rude, of course. But he definitely understood tea.

The cherry trees with their pink blossoms gave way to the white blossoms of apple. The path through the orchards lost its definition until she was walking through lush grass. Ace was beginning to realise that the problem with her oh-so-clever tea-tray approach was that there was every chance the tea would be stone cold by the time she found her errant Time Lord.

Fortunately, as she meandered through the apple trees in a direction generally away from the TARDIS's fake barn door, she saw a set of shoulders poking out either side of a tree trunk up ahead: white cotton shirt bright against the greens and browns. The Doctor sat with his back to her. She wondered if he knew she was close.

Ace lifted her chin and called, "Hiya!"

It took him a moment before he looked around. Before he did so, his shoulders grew very still. Ace could almost hear the Doctor's thoughts resonating through the air:

_'Why can't she take a hint and leave me alone?'_

When he did look around, he greeted her with a smile. She knew he didn't mean it, but she was grateful for the attempt. "Just the person!" he claimed. "Excellent timing."

Ace stepped around the tree and found the Doctor sitting on the same picnic blanket they'd used on Keverne. He was propped against the tree trunk, legs stretched out before him, the tray-with-legs she'd last seen at Woodstock forming a makeshift worktop over his thighs. On it were scattered tools and styli. A small plastic case lay opened out in two halves, filled with the mishmash of electronic circuitry that was the Doctor's own eclectic style: classic Earth components nestled alongside shards of etched Gallifreyan crystal and the tiny but robust capsules of intricately programmed gel from Tarnia. To one side of the Doctor was a portable data-screen he'd brought from the library. The screen showed a circuit diagram, presumably for whatever it was he was making.

"I brought tea," she announced, rather redundantly, as she set the tray down on a spare corner of blanket and sat next to it.

"Tea?" He swallowed, as if testing his need for liquid refreshment. "Ah. Yes, tea would be welcome."

Ace poured for both of them. "What are you making?" She refrained from adding that the middle of the apple orchard was a very weird place for him to be making anything at all.

"I thought it was about time I fixed my TARDIS remote," the Doctor said. "Always handy, to be able to bring the old girl straight to me." He shot her a brief look that blended sorrow and caution in more or less equal parts. Ace didn't react, so he went on, "Then, once I'd started, I thought of a few other functions it would be useful to work in. So I decided to redesign the whole thing. Make a better one."

She handed him his tea. "And how's it going?" she asked. Because to observe that their near-miss on the space-station would never have happened if the Doctor had thought to fix his little remote-control gadget a week earlier would be cruel.

"Almost done," he said. He paused and sipped his tea, then sighed with theatrical relish. "Lovely."

"And why do you need me?"

He hesitated, frowned, looked at her. He seemed lost; the expression came over him without any warning.

"Just now," she said slowly, "you told me my timing was good. So what do you need?"

"Oh! Yes." His weird expression went away. Ace wondered if she'd imagined it. "The problem with a device like this," he said, gesturing vaguely at the electronics before him, "is the potential for misuse."

"Right," she said. "Wouldn't want anyone who picked your pocket to be able to steal the TARDIS."

"Nor open its doors from a distance, which is what this circuit will do." He pointed at a bit of the screen. "Nor extend the ship's temporal grace field"– he indicated a configuration of Gallifreyan crystals –"to a radius of two metres outside the ship when the door is opened. Nor disable the temporal grace field entirely."

"This gizmo will do all that?"

"It will. Which is why I've taken a sensible precaution." The Doctor indicated another part of the circuit diagram.

Ace leaned closer, studying the circuitry. "That's the TARDIS," she said, recognising the patterns if not the function. "Telepathic circuits?"

"A little piece of them."

"Like my Irrizor walkie-talkie on Colonis?"

"Not only like it. These are the very telepathic circuits I used in that device." He shrugged his shoulders. "I recycled."

"And it's there to make sure only you can operate the gizmo," Ace concluded. "Like with our TARDIS keys. Nice one."

"Give me your hand," the Doctor said.

Ace blinked, then shrugged and offered her hand across the blanket. The Doctor positioned her index finger over one of the crystals in his circuitry.

"Close your eyes," he said, and waited until she'd done so. "Think of yourself, and the ship, and the connection between you."

That was easy. In their years together, Ace had learned to sense the presence of the semi-sentient time-and-spaceship. She and the TARDIS had teamed up to rescue the Doctor in Shanghai a few weeks ago. Their connection had been obvious only minutes earlier in the console room, when the ship had mutinied against her captain and told Ace where she could find him.

"Best blue box ever," she whispered.

For a suspended moment, Ace felt a pulse. It didn't centre on her earring, oddly enough. It wasn't a physical sensation at all, perhaps not even a mental one. This pulse felt like an emotional reaction. Like the warm pleasure in making someone you care for smile.

"Oh," she said.

"You can take your finger away now," the Doctor said evenly.

Ace reclaimed her hand and opened her eyes. "What was that?"

He shrugged, concentrating on clipping the two halves of his electronic gubbins together into one smooth case. "Just programming the, er, 'gizmo' with the thought patterns of those who can use it."

She thought about that for a few seconds. She should have realised that was what was happening.

" _I_ might have to use it?" she prompted.

"Of course." He spared her the briefest glance. "Recent events have shown there may be occasions when I'm indisposed. Once I've tested this one properly I'll make a second unit for you to carry."

"I'm not...I don't...um." Ace shook her head. "So you're not throwing me out?"

There was a pause. She hadn't thought about what she was going to say before she said it, and the words had shocked her. She went cold.

The Doctor looked puzzled. "Throwing you out where?"

"Anywhere convenient." The sound of her breath was shaky. "You're not about to give me the old heave-ho?" This notion had sprung at her from nowhere and dug in its claws; now it refused to let go.

Of course, it also explained why she'd just spent two hours in the workshop, tidying up her old projects but failing to begin any new ones.

The Doctor was startled into looking at her properly. His hands stilled, and his lips parted as he tried to find words. He shook his head in apparent confusion.

"Oh god," Ace whispered.

She experienced a dizzying wave of relief. With it came the knowledge that she'd been working very hard to ignore this possibility: that something had happened in the life-pod, or maybe earlier, perhaps _much_ earlier, during those long months she'd spent navigating her feelings with such an amateurish lack of finesse. And whatever it was, it had left the Doctor convinced that she wasn't worth bothering with anymore.

"Ace?"

"I thought I'd ruined everything," she choked out. Breathing was becoming difficult. The dizzying relief was now mere dizziness. Her heart pounded, and there was a buzzing noise all around her that she was pretty sure only she could hear.

"Why would you think that?"

"I thought you'd seen through it all. And then the space-station. And the dream." She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry. She looked away, took a sip of tea, found herself coughing hard. Her throat stung, but words still wanted to tumble free; she couldn't stop them. "And before all that, even. All the _stupid_...I didn't know if you were disgusted or freaked out or-or-or just plain fed up with me! Stupid human ape. I didn't know. I didn't–"

She paused and sniffed. Her headache throbbed hard, as though someone had taken a branding iron to her brain. A voice in her head screamed at her to stop talking, _stop talking_ , but to no avail. It felt as if there were an emotional valve buried deep inside her, something that had rusted shut when she was thirteen years old and her world had shattered in the aftermath of a firebomb, only now that valve was cranking open and she couldn't spin it closed again. The sensation was physical. Ace wondered why the whole orchard wasn't shrieking and clanging with the torturous sound of seized metal finally giving way.

Across the picnic blanket, the Doctor had stopped looking confused and was now looking concerned. He set his worktop aside and reached an arm towards her, as if she needed steadying.

"I couldn't even do something nice for you without it all going wrong," she recalled, thoughts occurring randomly, darting at her like swarming insects. "And then, in China, I thought I'd lost you. You were in so much trouble and I couldn't find you and it was my own stupid fault. And who helped me? A teenage fucking prostitute!" She snickered, the sound too bright, too manic. "I mean, seriously, something out there is having a hell of a laugh at my expense, right?"

"Ace–"

"And then, then _this_!"

She looked at him, battered by emotions that had surged over defences she'd spent her whole life building. He looked back, startled into stillness, lips parted and face pale. He might have been waxwork were it not for the way his shoulders moved with shallow breaths.

"I haven't seen you for seven days, Doctor," Ace said.

"I know," he murmured.

"I almost died."

"I know." He looked down, frowned at his hands.

"A-and I can't sleep! God, I'm so _tired_. My body keeps kicking me awake whenever I drift off. Scares the crap out of me. And I just – I miss you. Oh, god, I miss you. It hurts. On Colonis I missed you, and-and Shanghai, and this last week, too." She swiped at the tears that ran down her cheeks, hating herself for them. She laughed a harsh laugh. "I've been trying so hard to believe I'm older now. Wiser now. Look at me! I'm pathetic!"

Finally something inside her switched tracks. All the distress was smothered as she felt a surge of rage. It was the way she protected herself: she took the scary, exposed, hurtful things and scrunched them up into a tight ball of anger. When she was afraid, she turned to anger. When she was upset, she turned to anger. When she felt shame, or loss, or the kind of need that could never be met...

Always anger.

She looked down at her half-filled tea mug and heard herself cry out as she flung it far away. It should have smashed against a nearby tree trunk, but instead it found an unlikely trajectory through the trees and fell harmlessly to the verdant grass. Ace would have tut-tutted at the ship's not-so-subtle interjection, but she was busy. Scrambling to her feet. Needing to get away. Needing to punch and kick something. Perhaps herself. She deserved it, after all.

She'd taken no more than three steps and was thinking about breaking into a run when her escape was halted. Something grabbed at her trailing hand. She looked over her shoulder to see the Doctor on his feet and holding on to her. She tried to yank herself clear. She'd given him his seven days of hiding; couldn't he offer her a measly couple of hours? But the Doctor was stronger than she was. His grip was ungentle.

A roar of denial welled up inside her, though the subsequent noise she made was barely a rasp. For a disorienting moment she felt imprisoned, shackled, but this was followed by another moment which flipped the feeling on its head to leave her adrift and alone and lost. She realised with a flash of insight that she'd never been in control. Not of this. Not of the way she felt. Emotions didn't curl up and die when you locked them away. Emotions fed on that kind of repression, gorged on it until they grew monstrous. And it wasn't just about Manisha and all the rest of that messed-up childhood stuff. It was about herself, and the Doctor, and the shape of this thing they had made together.

"Let me go!" she managed to shout.

"Do you think I'm blind?" the Doctor demanded. "That I didn't notice? Do you think any of this is easy?" He pulled hard on her wrist, twisted her round to face him, captured her other arm with an equally insistent grip. His expression was heavy with accusation. "I thought I'd lost you on Colonis. And in Shanghai, I made a terrible choice and almost lost you again." The expression hardened. "And then, finally, it happened. Right before my eyes. All because I never got around to fixing a small device. The press of a single button – ten seconds, and we'd have been gone. No threat to the galaxy. No threat to your life. And I–"

"It wasn't your fault!"

"I watched you _die_!"

"And I'm very sorry. I promise never to do it again. Do you want me to leave?"

They were staring at each other, and the tears in her eyes matched those in his own. Ace wondered whether the Doctor was as surprised as she was that a quiet let's-make-friends-again moment over a cup of tea in an orchard of blossoming apple trees had turned into this emotional maelstrom.

"No," he whispered. Then, more loudly, "Yes. Yes, it's clearly for the b–" He stopped, probably because of the agony Ace couldn’t hide as he spoke those words. She was already pulling away when he said, "I don't know what to do!"

But in his uncertainty his hold slipped, and Ace tore free. She did the only thing she had ever done when faced with news she could not handle: she ran. A second, two seconds, and she was hurtling between trees and kicking up the first fallen petals of the blossom.

~~~

She went to the mountains. There was always something purifying about rough stone and cold air and the strength of your own muscles taking on the force of gravity.

This was a challenging route, but one Ace had climbed before. It began with some bouldering. Then there was a steep grassy slope, walk-able, even though it pulled your thigh muscles pretty hard. Then there was a downhill bit that ended in a stream which ran clear with the coldest, freshest water Ace had ever tasted. Once you'd jumped that, there was a cliff face with a hollow underneath, so the cliff overhung the main path. The first time she'd solo-ed that cliff, she'd installed belaying ropes at the trickiest points.

Ace had taught herself to rock-climb in these mountains. She knew this particular route like she knew the back of her hand. And clinging to a cliff thirty metres above the mountain path, with only her hands and feet to keep her in place and a single nylon rope to catch her if she slipped (and it wouldn't have been the first time she slipped), was the one place in the TARDIS where Ace could guarantee herself some alone-time.

She kept most of her climbing gear stashed inside the doorway to the mountains. She wasn't dressed properly for this climb, though, because she hadn't wanted to risk going back to her quarters to change; she wore no base layer, no fleece. Just her T-shirt beneath her harness, and the knee-length cargo cut-offs she'd thrown on earlier. She'd put on her high-top climbing shoes and her gloves, and then she'd launched herself at the mountain as if it was the only thing she had left in the world to embrace.

The first surge of adrenaline had worn off. She held on to familiar lumps and crevices, knowing it was time to edge around to her left and find the fissure which ran between two sections of the cliff – she called it 'Tipsy Chimney' – which was the best way of gaining the next eight metres. But her breath was coming too hard, and the fresh air was icy and unforgiving. She shivered. Her muscles felt as if they were made of wool. Even the simplest movement demanded concentration and effort.

Ace hadn't slept properly in a week. Come to think of it, she hadn't been eating properly either.

And this wasn't even her home anymore, because he wanted her to leave.

Things fall apart.

She knew she couldn't hide here forever. This would be the last time she climbed this improbable mountain. After she was done, she'd go back to her quarters. Pack up what she felt like taking. Then it would be a question of waiting to see where and when the Doctor would drop her off.

God, she hoped it wasn't twentieth century Perivale.

Ace rested her forehead against granite. Her headache throbbed with every racing heartbeat. She was so tired. She didn't even know the right word to describe the feeling. Fatigue, exhaustion: they didn't come close. The sensation wasn't merely physical. She was too tired to think. Too tired to cry. She was almost too tired to feel.

Perhaps, if she went on like this, she'd end up too tired to love. That'd be nice. That'd be a relief.

She'd been so stupid. She saw it now. All those months, telling herself she had a plan. Strategising. All those clever conversations, all those tactics. Making herself believe it was simply a matter of time before the clue she needed dropped into her lap: it was all bullshit. That notebook, with its columns and marks. A section which recorded every time the Doctor had agreed she wasn't sixteen anymore. Another which noted every time she'd physically manhandled him. And another – the not-your-daughter references – and another – the nose-nudges – and another, and another, and another, and what the fuck did it all mean?

Nothing. It meant nothing. Just a sad obsession: a twenty year old woman acting like a fourteen year old school kid. She needed to grow up.

A sound, raw and agonised, wrenched itself from Ace's throat. She knew what it was. She'd become quite the expert when it came to self-loathing. There was, after all, a lot to loathe.

Filthy teenage whore.

Ace looked down at the distant ground. Thirty metres looked a lot further from up here than down there. She narrowed her eyes at her safety rope. It ran through the belaying device which was looped inside a carabiner attached to her harness. She sniffed, took one hand away from its hold, and moved it to the screwgate which kept the carabiner locked closed.

It occurred to her that there was one thing she could do which would make all these problems go away.

Her fingers, clad in the thin but durable fabric of the gloves she used for climbing, did not tremble as they spun the carabiner's screwgate out of its locked position. Her whole body was calm when she thumbed the carabiner hinge open. She looked, quite objectively, at the belaying device which attached her to the safety rope. That device would now slip out of the carabiner if she let go of the cliff-face.

She spent a moment watching herself in her mind's eye, imagining the way her body would fall clear of the cliff and smash down on the rocky path below. She wondered whether she'd die instantly, or whether it would take a minute or two. She tried to compare hurts: broken body on a mountainside versus dismissal from the TARDIS. Either way, she'd never see the Doctor again, which made the two hurts pretty much of a muchness. The only difference was that the first one would be over more quickly.

With that thought, the calmness left her. She shuddered. She heard herself give a high-pitched whine of distress. The sound shamed her, which made her angry: an anger that seemed to function as a spark to tinder. All the pain and loss and confusion rushed up inside her. Within seconds she was roaring it out. She roared until her throat felt sore. She roared for so long, she worried she'd gone mad.

She roared until she no longer felt the need. And then she stopped.

The sense of release was astonishing.

Time seemed to pause...

...

...and as the echoes of her cry faded away, Ace could sense a new space inside herself: a hollow place no longer cluttered by the pain she'd vented into the cold mountain air. Even as she recognised this, a pulse suffused her body, filling that hollow.

It was familiar. Like the warmth you feel when you make someone you care for smile.

"Oh," Ace breathed in recognition.

A moment later she'd snapped the carabiner back into place and locked its screwgate. She tightened the slack of her safety rope and looked to her left. And she began, methodically, to reach for the holds that would edge her around to the angled fissure that formed the 'Tipsy Chimney'.

As she climbed, she muttered to herself.

"When," she asked, "did you turn into such a drama-queen, Dorothy McShane?"

She hauled herself easily over the smooth bulge that she called 'Baby's Bum'. Her left foot found the deep crevice beyond the bulge's far side.

"I mean, honestly?" She feigned a bleat of despair: "'I made a mistake and I can't deal with the consequences, so I'm going to end it all!'" Ace rolled her eyes. "You are fucking ridiculous, you know that?"

The 'Tipsy Chimney' was in sight. She dragged her belaying rope to one side, caught at the next rope which lay flat against the granite and swapped them over.

"Okay," she muttered. "Maybe you _do_ know that. On account of this talking-to."

The best way to approach the fissure was to stretch across the gap between the two rock faces, get a good support there, then ease into the gap right shoulder first. Ace managed the manoeuvre as if she'd done it every day for the last ten years.

"Still," she said conversationally, "if you're finally in a receptive mood? Here's a bit more common sense."

The high-tops on her climbing shoes came into their own now, as she wedged her heel into a tapering vertical crevice and felt the padded material push against her ankle bones. She assured herself of three good contacts before she stretched for the lovely hand-shaped grab-hold that would be her main assist up the next two metres.

"Yes," she stated, "you let Glitz fuck you. And it was a mistake. You know what? People make mistakes. Especially sixteen year olds."

She climbed. _God_ , she loved climbing. Her heart beat fast as it worked to supply blood to her muscles, but the beat was strong and steady. The mountain air cooled her perspiration-sheened skin. She'd already bruised her shoulder and grazed her right knee, but those were minor ailments. Her small, insignificant, human form was taking on this majestic, ancient mountain and it was winning.

"You think you prostituted yourself just to get some help? Course you did. Your body was the only thing you had to sell. Wasn't your fault you got chucked across space and time."

Ace scrambled up the last section of the slanted fissure by locking her hand-holds and then edging up, caterpillar-style, using her backside against one face and the soles of her shoes on the other. She paused, and tightened her belaying rope. Then she swung out on to the handy ledge that would lead her back around to the right.

"Remember Li?" she demanded of herself. "Back in Shanghai? Pregnant at fifteen years old, the boy she loved murdered, forced to marry his killer. Her baby was stolen away, and still she escaped. Found a way to fight back. _She_ sold her body to survive. Did you judge her for doing what she needed to do?"

Ace swapped ropes again, then she looked up at the last few metres she needed to ascend to get to an isolated grassy shelf which formed the first convenient rest point of the climb.

"Of course you didn't," Ace answered for herself. "You're an idiot, but you're not a complete idiot."

The first two metres were easy, numerous holds and supports present in the granite's surface. She pulled herself higher and higher, enjoying the warm stretch of her muscles. She noted that she didn't feel that tired anymore.

"And you nearly made the same choice yourself, didn't you?" Ace added. "That first morning in Madam Deng's house – you were ready to sell your own body all over again, if that was what it took to get some help."

The confession felt liberating. It was another thing she'd been hiding from. She embraced it, now. It wasn't right, it wasn't good, it wasn't fair, but sex as a transaction had always existed, _would_ always exist, throughout the known universe. Turning to that option when deprived of all others might indicate a social flaw, but not a personal one. It was _society_ that forced shame on sex workers. And this was transference. It was nothing more than a comforting lie to disguise the truth: the shame was society's own.

Yes. She was pretty sure she had that right.

Ace paused, looking up at the cliff curving out above her. She was going to have to do the tricky bit now. She checked her rope and harness, her footholds, and she tugged at the wedged grip of her left hand. Only then did she allow herself to lean out from the face of the cliff, looking up at the stone and the sky beyond.

"So there it is," she murmured. "You let that tosser take your virginity." She reached higher with her free right hand, over the outcrop of stone that was visible, and her fingers felt along the granite until they found the crack they were looking for. "It was a mistake. But it was an understandable one. So lose the self-loathing. Idiot."

She hauled herself up and found a good grip for her left hand, then twisted her body and lifted her right leg, bent at the knee, against the curving rock face until she could wedge her toe in a shallow depression. This was the one point of the climb where she couldn't guarantee three good holds, but the risk was calculated.

"And as for the other thing – well, you always knew it would end. Eventually. It'll hurt. But you know what?"

She used the depression to push upwards and, one after the other, her hands reached for two new holds. She was safely anchored over the swell of granite before the friction on her shoe's sole slipped. She found herself dangling from the cliff, both feet waving in mid-air.

"Wasn't so long ago," Ace said, voice straining as she hung there, "you were telling yourself you hate women who define themselves by the men in their lives. What's so different about this? Get a grip, for fuck's sake!"

She used the strength in her arms to pull herself higher. The graze on her bare knee rubbed against the cliff, sore and blood-wet, as her foot found purchase on the top of the outcrop. The discomfort was a minor detail in the grand scheme. She gave herself half a minute to catch her breath.

"It'll be what it'll be," she decided. "Not your choice. So let it go and focus on the things you _can_ do. All these mistakes, these wrong turns, these emotional tangles..."

She drew a deep breath and prepared herself for the last heave.

"Forgive yourself!" The tone she used was that of a command. Absolute authority.

Ace surged upwards, found a wedge for her left foot, and scrabbled up the last metre to the wide grassy shelf. She kicked up with her right leg and rolled on to the ledge, then she shuffled away from the edge and lay on her back, looking up at the cold, clear sky, panting with exertion.

"Ace," she whispered between gasps, "I forgive you. Everyone makes mistakes."

"Nobody's perfect?" suggested the Doctor.

Ace yelped and twisted to look at the inside boundary of the shelf. The Doctor was sitting there in the grass, his back to the upper cliff. He was holding two mugs that gently steamed.

"I brought tea," he added.

There was an awkward pause for half a minute. During this time the silence was broken only by the sound of the grass rustling with the breeze and by Ace's laboured breathing as it calmed after her climb.

Eventually Ace said, without looking at him, without sitting up: "Why are you here?"

The Doctor made her wait for an answer. Maybe he needed to work it out himself.

"It occurs to me," he said, "we are both rather accomplished at running away from necessary conversations."

She huffed a dry laugh. "And this is the moment you've chosen to turn over a new leaf?"

"Apparently so."

"Halfway up a mountain."

"I didn't choose this location," the Doctor pointed out. "Still, it's a nice enough spot."

"I didn't know there was a short-cut up here." Ace was proud of how steady her voice sounded.

"There wasn't," the Doctor said. "Until about ten minutes ago."

Ace forced herself to sit up. That second wind which, moments earlier, had seen her strong and in control as she climbed was departing. The fatigue she felt was physical this time. It was natural: the kind of thing you'd expect to feel after a bout of exercise. She looked down at her harness and spun open the screwgate on the carabiner, then unhooked her belaying device and removed the rope. It slid back into place against the lower cliff, hanging from its Knifeblade pitons. She leaned over the edge of the shelf to check that the pitons remained fixed and true, even though she knew she wouldn't be relying on them when climbing, ever again.

Then she tucked her belaying device back into the carabiner and locked it closed. She shuffled away from the edge and joined the Doctor where he sat. She accepted the mug he proffered for one reason only: she was thirsty.

The Doctor said, "Oh." It made her glance at him. He was looking at the graze which had made a bit of a mess of her knee. His hands went automatically to his pockets before he remembered he wasn't wearing his jacket. He was still in his shirtsleeves, just as she'd found him in the orchard.

Without his pockets he seemed powerless. Their absence upset him. He tried his trouser pockets instead.

Ace sighed. "God, please don't fuss," she said wearily.

And because he wouldn't stop if she didn't do something, she opened the pouch attached to the waist strap of her harness where she kept a few basic first aid supplies. She fished out an antiseptic wipe that had 'Boots the Chemist' written across it, and tore open the sachet. As she methodically cleaned the shallow cuts, she noted the Doctor gripping his tea so hard it made his fingers go white.

"Pete's sake," she grumbled, "it's just a graze." She tucked the used wipe away in its sachet and pocketed it for later disposal.

"Ace," he said cautiously.

"Yeah, I know," she said, "but it isn't as if there's anything left to talk about, is there?"

"I can't agree with that."

"You made your feelings clear."

"Only to one of us," he said cryptically.

"Doesn't matter anyway."

"And there's another one." Emphasising every word, he stated, "I. Don't. Agree."

Ace let her head fall back against the cliff, so fast that it actually bumped and hurt. "God! You really want us to have this conversation now? I haven't slept properly for a week."

"Ah." A moment's pause. "Perhaps," the Doctor said, "we should take the approach of dealing with the small, solvable problems first."

"What, and leave the unsolvable ones well alone?"

"And assume they may take a little more work," he corrected. In a burst of energy, he stood up and held out a hand. "Come on."

"Come on where?"

"You need some sleep."

"Can't sleep," Ace said. "Brain won't let me."

"Well, that was before."

"Before what?"

"Before you climbed your mountain. Before you forgave yourself. You know, most people treat those things as metaphors." He reached closer. "Come on."

Ace grabbed his hand and let him haul her to her feet. "Too tired to argue with you," she said.

"Well," he said, guiding her along the shelf, presumably in the direction of his convenient short-cut. "Let's put that right, for a start."

~~~


	2. Chapter 2

Ace stirred from sleep in warmth and comfort. Her body felt relaxed. Even in that barely-aware stage between sleeping and waking, she noticed something: her head had stopped aching. This happy realisation quickened her thoughts. The headache had become a familiar presence over recent days. The absence of pain felt liberating, as if a weight had been lifted.

"Mmm," she said into the pillow.

Then she paused. Frowned. Because this pillow did not feel like _her_ pillow.

"Uh?" was her next comment.

She wasn't yet awake enough to risk opening her eyes, but she inhaled and rubbed her cheek against the smooth cotton. It was a perfectly good pillow. It smelled nice and it felt nice. But it wasn't the pillow that had cradled her head while she slept for the last four years.

"Morning," the Doctor's voice announced from not very far away.

She stiffened in surprise. "Um?" was all she could manage.

"Sleep well?"

"I, er – um?"

"I don't need to ask. Not really. But I'm given to understand that it's the platitude appropriate to this situation."

Words. Words, words, _way_ too many words for her brain to cope with. Ace grunted as they washed over her, then she used the pause to come up with something coherent of her own.

"Where am I?" she mumbled into that rogue pillow.

"In bed. You're not at your best, first thing, are you?"

"Whose bed?" Ace pressed.

"Mine."

She stopped breathing for a moment. Then she exhaled. Her breath was making the pillow hot, because she was lying all but face-down.

"And...where are you?" she asked. Because she was buggered if she was stretching out an arm in order to discover just how far this swerve in their relationship had gone.

"I'm over here," his voice said.

Too far away to be lying next to her. She wasn't sure why that was a relief, given all the times she'd fantasised about this kind of intimacy. Ace lifted her head enough to look beyond the edge of the bed. The Doctor was seated in an armchair that had been dragged close enough for him to prop his feet on the end of the mattress. His shoes seemed to be the only item of clothing he had shed in the time since they'd shared tea on a mountain.

He waved at her. "Hello."

She slumped down again. "Huh," she said.

"You don't remember?"

Ace thought back. How the hell had she ended up here? Rock-climbing, tea, she'd hurt her knee: all this she recalled. Then they'd left the mountains, emerged into a roundeled corridor and walked to her quarters. She'd been so tired. Her head had hurt. Everything had seemed blurred around the edges.

What had happened?

She concentrated, willing the memories to return, hoping they weren't going to embarrass her:

_She hesitated after opening her bedroom door, and looked around the room. She was thinking about the last few days, about all those times she'd jerked awake in a panic. The room itself had become linked with her insomnia. This was the place where her pulse raced, her chest twinged, her darkest thoughts launched suffocating assaults._

_For seven days she'd suffered in this room._

_She squared her shoulders and prepared to go inside. That was when the Doctor pulled the door firmly closed. He said, "Well, that's no good, is it?" and turned and walked away. "Come on."_

_"I don't need a new bedroom," Ace said as she staggered along after him, annoyed more with herself than with him._

_"I know."_

_"Or a sedative."_

_"I know that too."_

_"So where are we going?"_

_"Somewhere you can sleep without fear of bad things happening."_

_She stopped in the corridor. God, she was so tired. So fed up with herself. She remembered what her mum used to say: 'You're trouble, Dorothy. More trouble than you're worth.'_

_"Look," she said, "I'm okay. I know 'm'kay." Her words were slurring. Her knees trembled. She felt wobbly, like those people who've just finished the London Marathon and can't stand up straight. "It'll be fine. Jus' need..." She breathed deep and focused on speaking. "'s jus' my brain. Won't play along."_

_The Doctor turned back to her. "It's a paradox, I know, but a good night's sleep will help your brain remember how to have a good night's sleep."_

_And then he guided her along to the door which led to his private suite._

After that the memories got properly hazy. She must have cleaned herself up, because she didn't smell of yesterday's sweat. That was good. When someone offered you the use of their private quarters it was only polite to be clean and tidy about it. She could vaguely remember thinking that a change in location was a daft idea. How was that going to make any difference? She'd probably just get another bout of heart-racy insomnia, except this time with the added humiliation of an audience.

But that was the last thing she recalled before she'd woken up on this strange pillow, warm and relaxed and headache-free.

Back in the here and now, Ace said into the pillow, "I remember. Sort of."

"Splendid," said the Doctor. "I didn't want to have to explain. It might sound odd."

She huffed a laugh at that. "How long was I asleep?"

"Oh, you made me quite nostalgic. Reminded me of when you were first travelling with me – you managed almost ten hours."

Ace was starting to feel smothered by the pillow so she rolled on to her back. That much movement chased off her initial sense of relaxation; her body informed her that it had recently been involved in strenuous activity. She grimaced at the soreness in her muscles. Trying to ignore the discomfort, she arched her back and stretched. It made her feel more awake.

"Ten hours?" she repeated, a bit dubiously. She rarely managed more than seven in any given bedtime. She rubbed sleep from her eyes, then considered the roundels on the ceiling.

The Doctor said, "Well, you had quite a bit to catch up on."

"Hmm."

The air was cool. She glanced down at herself. Most of the bedclothes were rumpled at the foot of this expansive double bed. A single sheet covered her body as far as her navel. Her breasts were exposed; she was naked. She hadn't noticed it before, because she usually slept in the nude and so everything had felt normal.

Her face went hot. "Oh." She reached for the sheet and pulled it up higher, trying not to be too obvious about her embarrassment.

"Oh?"

"Um – why am I naked?" she asked.

"Probably because you took your clothes off."

She arched her brows, more memories returning. "I needed to shower."

"You insisted upon it. You used the sonic. Bathroom's where you left it, by the way. Over to your right."

She looked, and saw the door to the bathroom standing ajar. "Normally," she said, picking her words with some caution, "I'd have put something on after a shower. If I was, you know, having a sleep-over."

"Would you? Well, you didn't this time," the Doctor said blithely.

Ace found his insouciance just a tiny bit annoying, and concentrated instead on the sequence of events that had seen her end up in this position. She'd have used the sonic shower, brushed her teeth, then plodded out of the bathroom and fallen into bed...but when she thought about doing those things, it felt as if she was watching someone else.

"Did I do anything to disgrace myself?" Ace asked.

"Not that I'm aware of."

So she decided to change the subject. "Have you been here the whole time I was asleep?"

"Yes. I promised."

He'd promised? She couldn't even remember...

...although actually, yes she could:

_"Doctor?"_

_"I'm here. Go to sleep."_

_"Stole your bed."_

_"Borrowed. It's fine. Sleep."_

_"You're staying?"_

_"Promise."_

Okay, so she'd have preferred not to remember those details, as in hindsight they seemed childish. The Doctor taking on the role of security-blanket? Night-light? The notion made her cringe. Still. She'd been in a hell of a state. Perhaps she should cut herself some slack. The Doctor had done so, after all.

Ace decided it was about time she looked the Doctor in the eye. She propped herself up with an elbow, checked as discreetly as she could that the sheet covered her breasts, then turned to face him. His hair was tousled, and he offered her an affectionate smile. In his lap was a book, open but currently ignored.

Ten hours was a long time to confine yourself to quarters, just because of a promise made to a friend.

She swallowed. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Did I – was there any...I mean, while I was asleep, did anything–"

"You slept soundly and quietly. Apart from a short period just after your second REM cycle when you pitched on your back and started to snore. But you didn't suffer any hypnic myoclonia."

"Um?"

"The jerking-awake that has troubled you."

"Oh."

Ace nodded and sat up in bed. She rolled her shoulders, ignoring the aching, then she glanced over at the bathroom door. How much distance was there to cover? Three steps? Five seconds at the most? She could ask the Doctor to look the other way, but it seemed a bit redundant. He'd already seen all there was to see. To be fair, she'd had quite the eyeful of him, too, when she'd found him in that refrigerator in a Chinese basement, bound and naked.

No point being precious.

Ace slung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up and crossed naked to the bathroom. She couldn't even be bothered to pull the door firmly to; she just let it swing almost-closed. She used the loo, washed her hands and face and then studied herself for a moment in the mirror. Her features were pale and seemed more angular than usual. Her hair hadn't been brushed out since the previous morning, and the sonic had left it fuzzy and flyaway. Across her shoulder was a mottled purple stripe: an ugly bruise, sustained when she'd slipped early in her climb yesterday and her harness had caught awkwardly. The sight of that injury reminded her that she'd grazed her knee. It wouldn't have been an issue, except that she'd fallen asleep wrapped in someone else's sheets. When she looked down to check, however, it was clean and dry.

Maybe, Ace considered as she peered critically at her own reflection, this was why she hadn't sensed any sexual element to her naked presence in the Doctor's bed. Looking at herself right now, she saw nothing that said 'sexy'. Nothing at all.

Her clothes from yesterday were in a pile beside the shower unit. She didn't want to put them on again, so she bundled them up. Then she stepped back out into the bedroom.

"Hungry?" the Doctor asked. He'd set his book aside and put his shoes back on.

She thought about it, and realised she was ravenous.

"Thought so," he said. He jumped to his feet. "Are you all right now, if I go and raid the fridge?"

Ace rolled her eyes. "I'm not a little g–" She stopped herself. That stupid, obsessive notebook with its columns of marks was dancing through her thoughts, and she did not want to think about it. "I'm fine," she said shortly.

The Doctor paused a moment. His shoulders moved with a breath, then he gave a small smile. "You are," he agreed. Then he turned his back and left the room.

~~~

By the time she'd returned to her own quarters, and showered – this time with water and shampoo – and changed, and combed her hair, Ace had remembered the thing she'd been trying not to think about.

_'Do you want me to leave?'_

_'Yes. Yes. YesYesYes.'_

It hurt. The pain was oddly localised at her breast, forceful, breath-stealing, like a stiletto thrust.

She reminded herself that, high on an improbable mountain, she'd discarded the Ace who viewed leaving the TARDIS as the end of her life. No more teenage obsessions; no more dwelling on youthful mistakes; no more unhealthy dependence on one man to give her life meaning. If she was to face this chapter coming to an end, she was determined to do it with dignity.

She walked to the kitchen: the one with the wide countertops and the butterfly tiles. The Doctor had indeed raided the 'fridge' – in fact, an enormous pantry with shelves that maintained a stasis field to prevent food from aging – and had prepared a classic English breakfast that smelled wonderful. The Doctor's cooking skills were noteworthy.

Ace tried not to feel like a condemned woman being offered her choice of a last meal. She took a seat at the counter and watched the Doctor prepare platters of breakfasty goodness, including his special-recipe kedgeree: a breakfast item which, prior to her time in the TARDIS, Ace had believed existed only on the BBC.

Since the food was there, she ate. The Doctor even joined her. (He wasn't quite so accomplished at eating as he was at cooking.) He spooned a generous heap of kedgeree next to his toast and eggs. He left the bacon and the sausages for Ace; he occasionally ate meat, but not very often.

Five minutes into the meal, when her first hunger pangs had been assuaged, Ace paused to drink half a mug of tea. Then she said, "Listen, Professor–"

"After breakfast," he said firmly.

She sighed. "After breakfast," she agreed. At least he'd break her heart on a full stomach.

Ace stopped eating when she realised that one more sausage would be a sausage too far. She drank a second mug of tea, a touch morosely. The Doctor made to slide off his stool and clear the plates, but she stopped him with a touch at his shoulder and went to do the work herself. It was the least she felt she should offer. Anyway, she wanted to keep occupied.

"Thanks," she said, as their eyes caught across the counter. "For everything."

He shrugged. "It was just breakfast."

"Not what I mean."

"I know." He frowned and looked away. In spite of his assurance that he would no longer run away from awkward conversations, Ace was aware he'd be about as good at this as she was.

She loaded the disposal roundel with dirtied crockery and pans. The leftovers she parcelled up and stored inside the pantry. She found a cloth and wiped down surfaces. It made her feel ridiculous, doing all these uncharacteristically domestic things.

In the end she flung her cloth at the kitchen sink and strode up to the counter. She leaned there, glaring at the Doctor, and she said, "Okay. Just say it."

"Say what?" He appeared genuinely confused.

"It's all right, you know. I'm fine. You can – you don't have to treat me with kid-gloves."

"Ace?"

"Look, I know what I signed on for. I knew at the time. You never lied to me about that. I'm not going to pretend it was something it wasn't."

"I don't–"

She was getting frustrated. His obtuseness seemed deliberate. " _Your_ ship!" she said, reminding him of the speech he'd given her when first she'd set foot inside the TARDIS. " _Your_ rules. Right? So don't go thinking I've forgotten. I was only ever hitching a ride, and it lasted a lot longer than I had any right to expect, and I'd like to think it wasn't just about Fenric–"

"It was about Fenric," the Doctor interrupted quietly.

Her mouth went dry. "Oh."

He couldn't have hurt her more in that moment if he'd slapped her across the face.

"I thought..." she began. "I mean, afterwards, you could have just taken me back t–...Fenric was more than two years ago!" Her distress switched effortlessly to anger, and her voice rose in volume. "Have you wanted to throw me out, all that time?"

"Of course not," he said, suddenly angry too. "You misunderstand–"

"Oh, I do that a lot."

"Apparently so." He frowned. "You stayed because Fenric chose too well."

Ace stared at him. "I don't know what that means."

"It's not important. Or it is, but not now, not in this conversation. Ace, would you please just..."

She narrowed her eyes when it seemed he couldn't finish the request. "Just what?"

He sighed wearily. "The goodbye speech – I don't think it's helping."

She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. "Okay."

He seemed to relax. "Good. Thank you."

"You're right," she said. "Better not to make a song and dance. I'll just – I mean, give me a shout when you've decided where and when, and I'll be ready. Okay?"

She felt defeated. She'd tried to be sensible and hadn't been given the chance. This discussion, this milestone, this farewell had been important to her. The Doctor didn't care. Besides making her one last breakfast, for him the process was already complete.

Shoulders slumping, she moved around the counter. She looked carefully at her feet as she walked. She didn't want to see the relief in the Doctor's face. In spite of all her intentions, there were tears burning at the back of her throat.

There was a noise: the stool on which the Doctor sat moved. She hurried her steps. She didn't want him to see her losing it. There was another noise; she'd made it herself: a smothered gasp that tried to become a sob as she inhaled. She stopped breathing in order to hold it all in. She made it to the door. Suddenly, escape was the only thing in the world that she wanted.

There was another noise. The Doctor said her name. She couldn't afford to turn around and face him, not anymore. She wondered when he was going to make up his mind about what it was he wanted her to do. She pretended not to hear him and kept going.

"Ace!"

But it was hard to pretend not to hear someone crying out your name in frustrated anguish like that.

She stopped. She couldn't turn around. She bit her lip so hard that she worried about drawing blood, but the pain at least distracted her from the need to weep. The breath-holding was becoming uncomfortable so she exhaled noisily and tried to make it sound like an exasperated sigh. When she inhaled afterwards, however, the hitch was too obvious to disguise.

A hand came down on her shoulder, tentative, cautious. "Ace." Just a whisper.

"Don't make me cry in front of you _again_." She was proud she'd managed to get those words out, at least.

"Please don't run away," the Doctor said, as if she hadn't spoken.

"I'm not!" Indignation made her turn around, where seconds earlier she'd been convinced she couldn't face him. "You told me–"

"You misunderstood!" He took hold of her shoulders. His face was lined and anxious. He looked at her, tilted his head in consideration, then something in his bewildered expression cleared. "Do you _want_ to leave? Is that what this is about?"

What was he asking her to do now? Take the blame? To make it so that he didn't have to feel guilty? Hell with that. She was trying to be mature and dignified about this, but she wasn't going to lie.

"No," she growled, through a throat that was too full of hurt to produce well-defined words. "No, I do _not_ want to leave! I want to stay with you. Always." She sniffed, and when tears began to prickle over her skin she decided to ignore them. "I want to know, every day when I wake up, that you're going to be there. I want your face to be the last thing I see before my heart stops beating for good. Today, or tomorrow, or-or in seventy years' time. Doesn't matter. Don't you get it? Don't you understand what you mean to me?"

The Doctor shook his head, blinking rapidly. He looked shaken by her words. "Then why do you keep trying to say goodbye?"

"Because there's two of us here, and you're the one in charge."

"Ace–"

"You said you want me to go!"

He paused and looked downwards. His hands dropped from her shoulders. "I know," he said.

"So – do you?"

"No!" He turned away, one hand fidgeting distractedly in his hair. "I _never_ want my friends to leave. But I've come to accept that they do. They find someone else they want to be with, or a new cause, or they simply realise the time has come for them to do something else." He looked lost for a moment, then he met her eyes. "It happens. It always happens." His lips thinned as he pinched them together, presumably against the same strong emotion that had made his blue eyes go storm-grey. "And it always hurts. So I tell myself that around the corner will be a new friend, and this time I should be more careful. I should prepare myself. Make sure that when the time comes for them to move on, I'm better equipped to let them go without feeling so...bereft."

Ace watched him speak. He so rarely expressed his feelings; every time he managed to do so, she felt she had to listen closely. Right now it seemed as though the feelings were being wrenched out of him.

"I'm used to it. Used to the sadness," he told her, and briefly closed his eyes. "And now we come to _this_ time." He stepped close to her and, with the same caution he might have used to approach a wounded animal, he reached to touch her face. His hand was cool and it trembled against her skin. "This friendship." He tried to give her a small smile. "Ace – it always hurts when my friends leave. But with you, it would hurt more than most."

"Then why did you say you want me to go?" she asked, barely a whisper.

"Because..." He shook his head. His expression was helpless. "Because with you, it would hurt more than most," he repeated.

She frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

"And yet it is the truth."

"You don't want me to go, and that's why you want me to go?"

"I'm a complicated man," the Doctor said. He gave a smile, this one more enigmatic.

"You're an illogical man."

"That too." He sighed. "What I said yesterday, I said in the heat of the moment. I was wrong. I can't even bring myself to _think_..." He snatched his hand from her cheek and stepped back. "So if you want to stay – we should assume this is a mutually agreeable state of affairs. Let's leave it at that."

Ace nodded. "Okay." But she knew she sounded more cautious than relieved.

"And I, er, I apologise." He looked away. "For the confusion. And the way I..." He cleared his throat when his drifting sentence had drifted for a second too long. "The last few days. I was...I could have handled things rather better. Probably." He sniffed.

"It was me who went off on one," Ace pointed out. But she was growing irritated by this swerve the Doctor's mood had taken, away from wrenching, reluctant emotions, into some kind of weirdly formal dispute-resolution. "Isn't there other stuff we need to discuss, though?"

The Doctor looked at her sharply. Ace studied him, her gaze steady, daring him to go further than they had. He blinked. His stiffly held posture slumped.

"That would be entirely up to you," he said.

There was a weird kind of interlude, during which they considered each other. Ace couldn't work out whether the Doctor was offering her the opportunity to retreat with dignity, or if he was begging her to do just that, or if – even after everything – he somehow remained oblivious to her feelings.

She wanted to do it. Declare herself. It felt like the right time. It also felt like the one thing that might bring this fragile rapprochement crashing back down.

"We need to talk," she said, surprised by how steady her voice was. "But it'll wait until we've calmed down a bit."

The Doctor didn't feign bewilderment. He nodded once, walked past her and left the kitchen.

Alone, Ace sank to a crouch with her back to the wall. She lifted her hands and watched the trembling for a moment.

"'Six impossible things before breakfast,'" she murmured, though she wasn't sure where she'd pulled the quotation from. "How many are you allowed afterwards?"

~~~

Later that day, after she had run out of other things to busy herself with, Ace went to the library. She'd decided to do some research on Earth's political history, so that next time she found herself isolated from the TARDIS in any given era she might have a better chance of understanding the context of the time. She was going to start by looking into Lord Palmerston and Gladstone: the two names Cai had dropped in Shanghai.

She didn't get that far, because the library already had an occupant. The Doctor looked up as she arrived. He was seated in one of the matching pair of leather armchairs angled before the never-ending fire in the never-blackening grate. A book lay open on the occasional table next to him, but he appeared to have been gazing into the flames.

He smiled a faint smile, but he didn't say anything. He looked lonely. Ace couldn't work out why she got that impression.

She could have turned around and walked away. Or she could have gone to retrieve a book, or offered tea, or made any number of other excuses for her presence. But what was the point? She'd spent months perfecting the art of making excuses, dressing them up as strategising or research, but in truth it had all been in the service of one goal: she'd wanted to avoid a necessary conversation.

It was in that moment, looking at her friend in all his solitary introspection, that Ace recognised something. They'd reached a point of diminishing returns. From now on, evasion would do more harm than even the most brutal honesty.

So she went to take a seat in the other armchair, and she leaned back and folded her hands across her middle in a mirror to the Doctor's posture.

"I suppose," she said, aiming for 'conversational', "I've never been as brave as I like to make out."

The Doctor studied her, attentive, though carefully neutral in his reaction to her words. He didn't speak.

Ace breathed a self-conscious laugh. "I've thought about telling you this so many times," she went on. "So many different ways. Words. Actions. I've written you letters, too. Then I tore them up and threw them away. I never found the right phrasing."

Still he said nothing. His silence was becoming unnerving. Couldn't he give her a hint? A bit of encouragement?

"Thing is," she said, "it might be the most important thing I ever say to you. I want to get it right."

He twitched an eyebrow. With that one tiny gesture, Ace was pretty sure he'd said: _'Would you like another eighteen months?'_

He had a point. Ace tried to relax, drew a deep breath and said her piece, as honestly as she knew how.

"I'm in love with you."

She waited. She kept her hands folded because she didn't want to see herself fidget or tremble. The urge was immediately upon her to qualify the statement, offer clarification or second-guess his response. She refused to give in to it. She'd made her confession. It was his turn now.

The Doctor's eyes closed. He sat there like that, long enough for Ace to wonder if her words had somehow shut him down. Then he opened his eyes again.

"Thank you," he murmured.

She'd imagined this conversation any number of ways, but that was not a response she'd predicted. Ace frowned. "You're thanking me for feeling that way?"

"I'm thanking you for trusting me with it."

Ace thought about that. "Ah. You've been waiting for me."

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Long enough that it became...difficult," he said.

She nodded slowly. The conversation remained quiet, considered. It felt right to do it this way, after the drama earlier.

"You tried to tell me," she realised. Following no logical sequence, memories fired through her mind: comments she hadn't paid enough attention to; silences that had stretched too long; touches that had edged away from friendship into something more. She'd known he was on to her, she'd known for some time but she'd been too afraid to pursue it.

"Yes," the Doctor said.

"I was scared," she said. These confessions were coming more easily. They were freeing, somehow.

"You weren't ready."

"Not to risk losing you, no."

"I'm right here, Ace. And so are you." His mouth quirked. "We've survived worse than an honest conversation in a library."

She nodded. "Then can I ask – if you've been waiting for me, all this time, why didn't you make it clearer? I was obviously being thick, I get that, but your hints were kind of subtle. Even for you."

He was quiet for a while, considering how to answer her. It was odd, to see him so careful with his words. The Doctor was usually vocal to the point of garrulousness.

"I could only go so far," he replied. "You've pointed it out yourself on numerous occasions: there is an imbalance to our partnership."

"We're not student and mentor anymore," Ace said. "We grew out of that."

"We did. We've deepened our trust. We've learned from each other." He breathed in, breathed out. "Some things, nevertheless, will forever be out of kilter. It is not something either of us can change, or...help."

It sounded like he was gearing up to offer the inevitable gentle rejection. Ace could already feel the inclination growing within to shed this solemn honesty and choose anger instead. She demanded better of herself.

"Is this about the age thing?" she asked.

"That's part of it. Only a small part, though, for me. Gallifreyans with a regenerative cycle are long-lived. We're used to interacting, adult to adult, with people who might be centuries older or younger."

"You knew me when I was a child."

"I did. Though you would never have described yourself as such."

"No, I wouldn't. Because I was a child, and had a lot to learn."

The Doctor smiled at that. "The speed with which you learn would have sent my instructors at the academy into raptures. But my point is that if either one of us was going to be alarmed by 'the age thing' then it would be you."

"I honestly don't think about it that much," Ace said.

"Hmm. Our combined skill-sets are so uniquely compatible that in some ways our differences become our strengths. I may have more experience, but I'm comfortable with how you're better at some things than I am."

"Okay, so it's not the age difference. What's it about, then? Resources? The TARDIS?"

"I suppose it is. If we were ever to part, you're the one who would lose the most. There is little I can do about that." His eyes grew faraway for a moment. "Well – I suppose I could nip back to Gallifrey and requisition a TARDIS especially for you..."

"I like this one," Ace said flatly.

He smiled at that. "And she likes you."

"You make a fair point, though. And there's all the little things, too. I told you a while back that it isn't fun, depending on you for the day-to-days."

There was a pause for a while.

"So you think this imbalance means we're impossible," she finally said. "If we tried for more than friendship, I mean."

The Doctor frowned in thought, then shook his head. "I don't know. I have no frame of reference."

Her eyes grew wider. "Honestly? This issue never came up before?"

That didn't seem plausible. He'd been travelling for centuries. He'd had dozens of close companions. Ace did not believe that she was the first among them who had looked at him and seen a potential lover as well as a friend.

He arched an eyebrow. "I'm made of flesh and blood. I'm a father and a grandfather. I have loved, and I have been loved."

"Yes, well, that's what I figured," she said, with a slightly defensive huff.

"But this is new," he added.

"I don't follow."

He sighed. "I have, occasionally, been intimate with travelling companions in the past. But always in a way acknowledged as...transitory."

"Why?" she asked, feeling indignant on his behalf. Had all her predecessors been idiots?

"A multitude of reasons. All with one eye on the future." He looked a bit sad. "Necessity, to be frank. There was a tacit understanding that our time together would end."

Ace shook her head. How could anyone find themselves in this beautiful blue box, all of time and space stretching out before them, the Doctor at their side, and ever – _ever_ – want to be anywhere else? It simply did not compute.

"So when I told you earlier that I want to spend my life with you, that was weird?" she said.

"Unprecedented." He shrugged a shoulder. "You may change your mind, of course."

"I can't imagine why I'd do that."

"Time will tell."

"Fine, be a Doubting Thomas. But this makes the intimacy-issue...different?"

He pinched between his eyes, head bowed, and his shoulders moved with a breath. "Oh, Ace," he said. "Would we have spent months slowly tearing ourselves apart if it did not?"

Ace frowned hard at her folded hands. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wish I'd known I was hurting you. I wouldn't have wanted that. Not ever."

"Whereas I did know you were hurting, and I could do nothing about it."

His position clarified with that comment. Ace let her head drop back to the armchair and she breathed through the revelation.

"That's why you couldn't force the issue. Why the imbalance matters so much." She looked him straight in the eye. "You wanted me to be the one in control."

"It was the only power I could give you," he acknowledged.

"Hmm." She smiled a mischievous smile. "Plus? Much older man with all the wealth and influence, propositioning the penniless twenty year old? Sounds like a cautionary tale to me."

"Which is why it did not happen," the Doctor said firmly.

Ace nodded. "Okay, so – what _does_ happen?"

"What do you want to happen?"

She rolled her eyes. "Are you hedging, or are you still on the give-Ace-some-power thing?"

"The latter. We're past hedging, I think."

"Well, you say that but you haven't told me how you feel."

"Haven't I?" He shot her a pointed look. And he was right; this conversation would have gone very differently if he'd offered the gentle rejection she'd anticipated.

"Only in a roundabout and plausible-deniability kind of way," Ace said, tempering her accusation with the fondness of her smile.

"That does sound like me," he agreed. "Are you going to answer my question?"

"What happens next?" She considered. "I've had time to conjure a hundred different scenarios. Most of them involve me either crying in a corner or ripping the shirt from your back." His eyebrow twitched at that. "I like the second kind better."

"I'll admit, it sounds intriguing," he said, voice pitched lower than usual, eyes dark as he gazed across at her. "Still. I see no need to rush things." He spread his hands out, palms up, in a gesture of invitation. "Would you consider moving more slowly?"

Her heart beat a little faster. "You're saying you're willing to give this a try?"

The Doctor nodded. "A caveat," he said, raising one finger. "If you come to believe that this was a mistake then you must tell me so."

"You too," Ace returned. "I mean, I appreciate the control you're trying to offer, but there comes a time when this has to work two ways."

"Acknowledged," the Doctor said.

"My biggest fear for a long time has been ruining what we already have," she added.

"A valid concern. Does it change your mind?"

Ace shook her head slowly. "No. I want this too much."

"Then we're agreed."

"Agreed. But you'll have to advise me on how to do 'slowly'. My experience to date is pretty exclusively one-night stands and the odd fling."

The Doctor nodded his acceptance. He stood up, stepped closer, offered his hand. Ace took it and let him draw her out of the chair. The touch felt significant. Strange, even. The first time they touched as more-than-friends.

"Slowly," he said, "does not necessarily preclude practically."

"You want to get practical?" she asked, unable to hide a flicker of innuendo. "Already?"

"I don't–"

"That's what the cool Gallifrey kids are calling it now, is it?"

He offered his best mock-glare. "If you're going to be aggravating then I shall draw this discussion to a close."

"And go and pout?"

"And go and do something very important and clever that does not involve pouting in the slightest." He looked at her sideways. "Especially not if you can see me doing it."

"I hereby abstain from aggravation," Ace said. Then she blinked. "Hey – we're still us."

"Who else would we be?"

"No, I mean, the teasing. We're the same."

"And why would we be different?" He looked genuinely confused.

She couldn't believe he needed to ask. Hadn't everything just changed? "Because," she said, "that would at least justify the way I've made an absolute arse of dealing with this issue."

He frowned for a moment, then understanding dawned. "Ah. You thought this conversation should upend the entire universe."

"Well...at least stop a few worlds spinning on their axes or something."

"Your ego is approaching the scale of my own. Well done."

Ace rolled her eyes. She glanced down at the way they simply held hands now, loose but connected. It felt nice. "Fine. Let's get back to 'practically' and gloss over my wild self-importance."

"Right you are." His smile was affectionate. "There's something I've been meaning to do. Something worth doing, I think. Will you meet me in the console room in, say, ten minutes or so?"

"Okay. Is there a dress-code?"

The smile grew mischievous. "Call it smart-casual." He lifted her hand in his, brushed a kiss over her knuckles, then let her go and turned away.

Ace frowned. "I never know what that means," she called after him.

"Neither do I," he called back.

She shook her head at his retreating form, then looked down at the hand he had kissed. A delicious sense of anticipation crept over her.

"Slowly and practically, eh?" she murmured.

That was good enough for her.

~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  
>  _'Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There', Lewis Carroll 1871_


	3. Chapter 3

When she made it to the console room twelve and a half minutes later, Ace was just in time to hear the TARDIS land with its characteristic thump. She always thought of it as the ship jumping down from the vortex into real space and landing solidly on both feet.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Earth," the Doctor said, placing his hat on his head by way of a roll up his arm. "London. Nineteen-seventies."

"Oh." Ace's stomach lurched. As much as she was revelling in this newfound sense of honesty, it was hard to hear a date and location like that without wondering. She swallowed the sensation and asked, "Second thoughts?"

"Hmm? No! Nothing like that." He reached to collect his brolly from the hat stand. "Remember when we were in Kent a few months ago?"

Of course she did. She'd rescued a stranded alien, restored the integrity of a weird canine sport and sold her programme from the play-off final. "Yeah," she said. She grabbed her jacket from the hat stand. "What about it?"

"Remember the nice lady with the lemon drizzle?"

"Mrs Bulwell," Ace recalled. "And I'm offended you had to ask. My memory for home-baked goods is infallible."

"Quite right too," the Doctor approved. "Can you get the door?"

Ace activated the door control and then followed the Doctor out of the ship. They'd landed in some kind of plush waiting room: rows of straight-backed chairs along two walls, Axminster carpet with diamond motif, polished wood panelling. A clock mounted over the door told her it was five to four. The daylight apparent beyond the net-curtained sash window informed her it was the afternoon rather than pre-dawn.

"So what about Mrs Bulwell?" she prompted.

"Well, she was very grateful, remember?"

"I remember. We got cake. We've been over this.'"

"She offered more than cake," the Doctor said. "Don't you recall the envelope she gave us?"

"Yeah. You tried to turn it down."

"And she insisted." He locked the TARDIS door and patted the ship before turning away. "So I donated it to the SUFUUS."

"The 'suffers'? Sounds nasty."

"The Support Fund for UNIT Soldiers. It's a charity. Provides help to those who've been invalided out of the taskforce, or to the families of the deceased."

"Oh. Okay." Ace followed the Doctor over to the waiting room door. She could smell beeswax furniture polish. Her boots sank into the carpet as if it was newly fallen snow. "And so now, as we skip to the end of this story, the point of landing in what looks like a Harley Street specialist's waiting room is...?"

"Not Harley Street," the Doctor said, stepping into the hallway beyond the room. "Close, though. Belgravia. And definitely a waiting room. But I'm not very good at waiting." He glanced back at her, a glint in his eye, and added, "As we have established."

"And I feel rotten about that. I'll think up some creative ways to make it up to you."

He stilled. He turned around and looked at her properly. Ace tried not to sigh, waiting for the inevitable lecture about how she was failing to grasp the central tenet of 'slowly', or about how human beings were far too obsessed with the sex part of being in a romantic relationship.

He stepped up closer. Ace stood her ground. She wasn't going to back down on this. 'Slowly' she could do. Waiting she could do. But she was damned if she was going to bite her tongue on the urge to flirt. Eighteen damn months she'd spent, monitoring her every comment and tease just in case she gave herself away. Not anymore. With honesty came freedom.

The Doctor studied her a moment. His eyes dropped to look at her mouth before they lifted again. Ace's heart-rate sped. This did not appear to be pre-lecture behaviour. Actually it felt rather like the precursor to kissing.

There was a suspended moment while they just looked at each other, then:

"Wicked," the Doctor breathed, finding the double-meaning in the word. Ace had to smile at the quip, even though he was standing too close and his voice was too soft and in truth, what she really wanted to do was grab those lapels, pull him in and kiss his mouth. "But...if I could make a request about said creativity?"

"Of course," she said. Her legs were beginning to tremble. Fortunately he'd backed her up against the closed door behind them, so she had some support. "More fun with feedback."

He leaned in and whispered in her ear, "My feet are unbearably ticklish. My earlobes are profoundly erogenous. And I have quite the proclivity, in this incarnation, for wordplay. I suspect, the earthier, the better."

Ace made a small noise that was part protest and part arousal. Suddenly standing her ground seemed less important than taking this conversation somewhere private.

"Most of all, though..." he murmured.

"Yes?" she whispered.

"If you could contrive some restraint, at least until we're less likely to trip over a solicitor."

Smoothly, he drew back. He must have seen the flush to her cheeks because he gave a small, satisfied smile.

"You are evil," Ace managed.

"You started it."

"Are you going to do that every time I flirt?"

"If it makes you so delightfully pink and short of breath – yes. I think so."

"And this is 'slowly', is it?"

"Of course." He inhaled through his nose and then leaned close enough to brush his lips against her temple. "The whole point to 'slowly' is the anticipation."

He spun away. Pleasingly, it seemed to take him a moment to remember where they were. He looked around at the hallway, took a step, stopped, stuck his umbrella out as though it were some kind of water diviner and turned through one-eighty. Then he marched off the other way.

Ace puffed out her cheeks as she reclaimed her composure, then she followed. "Hang on," she said, as their brief exchange caught up with her. "We're at a solicitor's office?"

"We are indeed."

"Okay. So, setting aside the fact that you just turned my knees to jelly _way_ too easily, how did we get from UNIT support funds to solicitors?" Ace asked.

"You wanted to skip to the end of the story."

"Yeah, well, now I want you to back up."

He shot her an amused smirk. "I contacted the Brigadier. Told him the fund could expect a nice donation. And in the meantime, I asked if I could collect some of the salary I never bothered to pick up."

"Why?"

"At the time I didn't really have much use for a disposable income."

"No, I mean, why did you decide to pick it up after all this time?"

"Because _you_ were the one who noticed the rogue Fly-ball team's Boxer didn't drool."

At the end of the hallway was another door. The Doctor opened it, just as a young man with seriously Brylcreem-ed hair was reaching for the handle on the other side. The young man let out a yelp, then clutched at his heart in a theatrical gesture. He was wearing a pinstriped suit with the widest lapels Ace had ever seen.

"Doctor," the young man said through his gasps. "You frightened the living daylights out of me!"

"Sorry, Clive," the Doctor said, not sounding sorry at all. "But your father told me off, last time I parked in reception. Is he around?"

"He's in Tenerife with Mum," Clive said. "Can I help, or do you need Grandpa?"

The Doctor turned to Ace. "Welcome to Gilchrist, Gilchrist and Gilchrist," he said. "This is Mr Gilchrist. I call him Clive. It saves a lot of confusion. Clive, this is..."

The Doctor tailed off. He looked confused. It was as if he'd forgotten how to introduce her. Perhaps he thought 'my friend Ace' didn't cover all the bases any longer. Which seemed bonkers. Their friendship was the most solid foundation they shared.

"I'm his friend, Ace," she said. "Hiya." She pretended not to notice the Doctor's scrutiny as she spoke.

Clive offered Ace a hand to shake, which she took. "Hi. My name's William, actually," he confided. "But so's my grandfather's. Call me Clive. I'm used to it."

"Right-ho," Ace said. "Um – Professor? You were explaining?"

The Doctor had, at this point, recovered from his stumble. He beamed at her, then at Clive-or-William. "You'll do splendidly, Clive. Upstairs office? Lead the way!" Clive nodded and led them along the hallway, back past the door to the waiting room. The Doctor, walking alongside Ace, said, "The point about Mrs Bulwell's problem is that _you_ investigated. You found the clues. You solved the puzzle."

"It was a team effort," Ace said.

"But with hardly a fifty-fifty split on the workload. Therefore, Mrs Bulwell's generous reward should have been yours."

Ace shrugged. "Not to worry. The fund sounds like a good cause."

"And so it is."

Clive took them around a corner and up some carpeted stairs.

"Anyway," the Doctor went on, "never knowing where or when I'm going to be, I've found it best to have a trustworthy firm handle my financial to-ings and fro-ings."

"Oh." Ace frowned at the apparent change of subject. "I don't usually see you do that kind of thing."

"Why would you? It's boring." He glanced ahead. "No offence, Clive!"

"None taken," Clive said affably.

"Mind you," Ace said, "you do have an impressive set of credit cards and whatnot. Especially for..." She glanced at Clive. "Round here," she finished, because 'this planet' might have sounded a bit odd.

"I do indeed. Didn't always. Sometimes I winged it. But over time and personas I've come to value a bit of structure to my resources, especially for..." He cleared his throat and said, "'Round here,'" in quite the least subtle manner that he could have managed. While Ace was rolling her eyes at him he added, to Clive, "She means planet Earth."

"Yes, so I gathered," Clive said without turning around.

"So!" the Doctor said. "That's why we're here."

They turned a corner on a landing and then trotted up another flight of stairs.

"And I'm finally privy to a spot of your housekeeping. Um – great?" she tried.

"No, no, no. Try to keep up, Ace. This is _your_ housekeeping."

"It is?"

At the top of the stairs the Doctor paused. He leaned over his umbrella and looked her in the eye. "You were right," he said. "What you said in Hackney. About independence."

"Oh."

"And though there are some imbalances I can never truly address, I can certainly address this one." He twitched his nose, as if he'd caught scent of something off-putting. "Especially given that I should probably have done so about four years ago."

Ace shrugged. "We've been busy. Those monsters and villains don't go round defeating themselves, you know."

"Quite." The Doctor followed Clive off the landing and into a passageway. "Although sometimes they do," he added over his shoulder at her. "If we're exceptionally clever."

"Or exceptionally lucky," Ace retorted.

"Clever people make their own luck."

The Doctor stopped at a doorway, and allowed her to precede him into the room their host had entered. It was as old-school and formal as the rest of the building. An oak desk of startling dimensions was positioned in front of a tall sash window. The window was framed with heavy curtains of burgundy and gold, with matching pelmet. The desk was kitted out with a leather-encased ink blotter and a polished stand for a fountain pen; all this antique finery made the two rotary-dial telephones to one side of the desk appear a touch gauche.

There was a fireplace in the wall opposite the door, unused at present, and a mantel above it held a brass clock that made a very impressive clunk with its second-hand. Above the clock was a huge portrait of a bearded bloke in late nineteenth century dress looking grimly patrician.

"Right. Well. This is cosy," Ace said, because if she'd gained one talent throughout her complicated and chaotic life it was how to deflect a sudden sense of I-don't-belong-here.

A hand squeezed her shoulder. "Don't worry. Clive will do all the hard work."

"Please sit down," said Clive, who'd situated himself in the imposing leather chair on the window-side of the desk. "And don't mind Great-grandpa Gilchrist," he added, glancing at the portrait. "I'm reliably informed he only ever turned that look on people he found tedious. I doubt either of you qualify."

"Clive's quite right," the Doctor said blithely. "Arthur glared in his portraits because getting one's portrait painted is quite the insufferable experience." He glanced at Ace. "You'll be finding that out, of course."

"Can't wait," she said. The reminder of the portrait they'd passed in Windsor Castle was a bit jarring, though. She hadn't thought about that for years.

Clive, who didn't seem at all fazed by the notion that the Doctor knew exactly what his great-grandfather was like, smiled reassuringly at Ace over the big, intimidating desk. "So what can we do for you?"

"Haven't the foggiest," she said, and nodded at the Doctor. "Ask him."

The Doctor settled in his chair with his umbrella upright between his knees and his hands folded atop the handle. "A while ago I established an account with Barings in the name of Dorothy McShane."

"Hang on, you did what?" Ace said.

"Excellent," Clive said. "It's time to talk about that, is it?"

The Doctor frowned. "Hmm?"

"A couple of years ago, I asked the Doctor with the fair hair and the..." He gestured vaguely at his lapel. "You know. Cricket jumper and a whole lot of beige."

The Doctor pulled a face. "Oh dear, did you? He probably looked disapproving." He sighed. "I could get rather puritanical about things in those days."

"Um. Well, he scowled a bit then told me not to mention it until he did. Or another him, anyway. It was the first time I met that you, I think."

The Doctor nodded and turned to Ace. "Clive and I have been friends since the great Sherbet Fountain scandal of 1951."

Clive tutted. "I was five," he told Ace. "And there was rationing, so most sweets were black market. It was big business for organised crime. Unfortunately, the local smuggling racket got infiltrated by leftover fascists who were trying to use doctored sugar products to produce a new generation of Nazis."

"Wow," Ace said. "Sugar can do that?"

"Sugar laced with a neurotransmitter designed to shut down those parts of the brain that control empathy and decision-making. Fascism doesn't need those. All about the rigid obedience." The Doctor sniffed. "Which was how the, er, 'leftover fascists' found themselves so easily taken in by the three rogue Dominators who'd gone missing from the war on Valeth Skettra." He snorted to himself. "Not sure who felt more foolish in the end. The Dominators who couldn't even enslave a small group of idiots, or the fascists who thought they were reclaiming their twisted national pride by selling their country's children out to alien slavers."

Ace blinked at him. Clive just waited patiently.

"Sorry, where were we? Ah yes." The Doctor smiled at Clive. "You may now talk about Dorothy McShane. But if any of the other 'me's pop in, mum's the word."

"All right then." Clive stood up and went to a set of filing cabinets in the nearest corner. He unlocked one of them with a key that was attached to a long chain clipped to his belt. The folder he removed was heavy with paperwork. Ace supposed that in the seventies, things were still far from being conveniently digitised.

The folder was set down on the desk. Clive retook his seat. He sorted through the sheaf of papers, neatly subdivided into a kind of timeline now Ace looked more closely, and then cut the stack at a certain point. He traced a finger down a dot-matrix printed sheet with the holed edges torn off.

"Here we are," Clive said. "Current balance is...seven hundred and forty-one thousand pounds, and fifty three pence."

The Doctor nodded.

Ace said, "Gordon Bennett!"

The Doctor said, "We need to backfit the usual power of attorney for yourselves. We need to get Ace set up with an account book and cheque book. I also need you to establish the usual system over time. Updated versions can go to this PO Box."

"Which PO Box?" Clive asked, confused.

"Hmm? Oh!" The Doctor rummaged in his jacket pockets, his trouser pockets and even his waistcoat pocket before he smiled impishly, reached towards Ace's ear, hitched his sleeves and then snatched a folded piece of paper out of thin air. He presented it to Clive.

"Are you always like this in your solicitor's office?" Ace asked mildly.

"I'm like this everywhere. You should know." The Doctor leaned closer to her while Clive unfolded the piece of paper and made careful note of what was, apparently, Ace's very own Post Office Box address for Very Important Financial Stuff. "It's possible," he added in a confidential murmur, "that I'm in slightly ebullient spirits."

"Really? And you're not even the person here who just learned they're most of the way to being a millionaire." She tilted her head towards him. "How the hell did you give me that much money?"

"I didn't give you anything. I deposited, on your behalf, an amount exactly equal to Mrs Bulwell's reward, plus a discretionary sum provided by Alistair to cover the assistance you've rendered UNIT over the years."

"And that came to seven hundred grand?"

"No, that came to a little under four thousand pounds. I just invested it in 1796."

"Oh." She frowned at the Doctor. "You talked to the Brig about this? I mean, about me?"

"I wanted it to be fair. So you didn't feel the original investment was anything you hadn't already earned."

Ace nodded. "And was he, you know, weird about it?" she asked cautiously.

"Well, he said, 'You've never gone this route with a companion before, Doctor,' in his most officious tone. I agreed that I haven't. Then he got cross because I didn't rush about trying to explain things in an embarrassingly detailed way."

Ace grinned. The Doctor grinned too.

Clive gave a delicate cough, beckoning them away from their private conflab. When he had their attention he said, "I'm afraid there's a few forms."

The Doctor nodded vigorously. "Of course. Can't do anything without forms. Very important. Deathly dull, too. I'm going to find that nice Mrs Singleton and see if we can get some tea and biscuits. Can't do anything without tea, either. You'll be fine here, Ace. You're in good hands."

Ace nodded, unsurprised. Clive said, "Mrs Johns. Mrs Singleton retired last year."

"Mrs Johns!" the Doctor said happily. Then he frowned. "Is she nice too?"

"Gilchrist _et al_ do not employ disagreeable people," Clive said sternly.

"Of course not. Excellent company motto, by the way." The Doctor stood up and moved away from the desk. Once he got to the door, he turned back. "Oh, Ace will need cash. She'll tell you how much. Some pre-decimalisation too; you never know. And sort her out a MasterCard."

With that, he touched his hat to both of them and left the room.

Clive arched an eyebrow at the door, then looked at Ace. "He's chirpy," he said. "Even for him."

"It's been that kind of day," Ace explained. She looked at the folder of paperwork, then considered the summary of instructions the Doctor had given. "So I take it we're among your more complicated clients, then."

Clive gave a wry smile as he began to fill in a proforma he'd taken from one of the desk's drawers. "Complicated – not really. Interesting, certainly. Occasionally time-consuming, although only in bursts. Like this visit today. But the Doctor always pays his fees on time, never wants anything other than access to money that is entirely his by rights, and very occasionally raids the biscuits in our receptionist's pantry." He glanced up at her. "Frankly, Ace – Miss McShane – sorry, which do you prefer?"

"Ace is fine."

"Frankly, then, Ace, the Doctor is quite _un_ complicated. And since he saves lives in the most heroic fashion on a semi-regular basis, Gilchrist's will always be happy to serve as best we can. We consider it an honour."

Ace nodded. "I'll see about replacing the biscuits. So. What am I signing today?"

"Almost two hundred years' worth of power of attorney contracts, stipulating that Gilchrist's have full authorisation to manage your financial affairs."

"Okay. Don't the older ones need to be available two hundred years ago, though?"

"Sure. The Doctor will see to all that. We keep copies of the older documents on hand for him, so we can fill them out all at once. Spot of distribution, and Bob's your uncle. More efficient that way."

"You guys have the system all worked out," Ace agreed. "Now. Pretend I'm really stupid. What does this power of attorney thing mean you actually do?"

"Basically, we make sure you and the Doctor have access to your money at any given date in time. Periodically we close accounts and transfer the funds to new ones. Better not to let the banks wonder why the same woman with the same signature is making withdrawals a hundred years apart."

"Right. Gotcha."

"So what we'll do today will take care of the past, going right the way back to when Gilchrist's was established. As for the future, next time you're in the neighbourhood, pop by and we'll bring things up to date. And take this card." Clive turned to the front of the folder he'd opened earlier and withdrew a business card from a cardboard sleeve. "We're a well-established firm with a solid reputation. Any trouble, you can always rely on Gilchrist's recognising your name and assisting as required."

Ace looked at the card, which contained two addresses and half a dozen telephone numbers, all associated with specified dates. She arched an eyebrow at it and then tucked it away.

"I am a woman of independent means," she said, mainly to hear the words out loud.

"Well," said Clive, blotting his inked writing carefully before handing the proforma to Ace. "There should be some perks to saving the world, right? This is a statement of identity. I'm supposed to ask for proof, but you walked in with him so we'll take that as read. Just have a look at the text and, if you're happy, sign in the space at the lower right."

She nodded as she took the paperwork, though she felt a touch disoriented. She had money. Quite a lot of money, certainly by the standards of the nineteen-seventies. She wondered what this stash of hers would look like by the next century. What would they do for interest by that time: slip her a gold brick?

"Of all the things I ever thought might happen to me," she said, "I never figured I'd get rich."

"No? Whereas all the other Doctor-related incidents – you saw those coming, did you?" Clive asked.

She smiled, because it was a fair point. Wealth may have seemed unlikely to the Dorothy McShane who'd been suspended from high school, but was it any weirder than time storms and Daleks?

"So, er, Clive," she said, changing the subject. "Know any nice restaurants round here? I've got this sudden urge to take an alien out for dinner. My treat."

"Oh, um – let's see. There's the posh places, round Sloane Square and Knightsbridge," Clive said. "But that doesn't strike me as fitting. Just 'cause you can afford the overpriced nonsense doesn't mean you should." He grinned as he caught her eye. "There's a little Portuguese restaurant, heading down towards Victoria. Ebury Square. Sandwiched between a betting shop and the entrance to a new car-hire place."

"Sounds picturesque," Ace said flatly.

"Not till you go inside and down the stairs. The restaurant is small, but not jam-packed with tables. Opens out at the back to a tiny yard filled with planters. And their chicken _piri-piri_ is the stuff of dreams."

Actually, it sounded kind of perfect. "Does the Doctor know where it is?" she asked casually.

"No idea. But not many people do. Want me to book you a table?"

Ace put the form down and signed it with the proffered pen, as if she'd ever have done anything else. "That would be brilliant."

"Seven o'clock tonight okay?" Clive asked, pulling one of the rotary-dial phones nearer.

"Good a time as any."

She and Clive had almost finished the paperwork by the time the Doctor reappeared with a tea-tray. She had tucked away the map Clive had drawn for her, showing the route to the restaurant. She had a reservation for two, for seven o'clock. Her first ever restaurant reservation, in fact.

The Doctor handed her a cup of tea he had prepared to her liking. He added a chocolate digestive on the side of the saucer, and a small brass key as well.

"What's that?"

"Your Post Office Box key," he said. "Don't worry about it too much though. I usually pick the lock on mine."

Clive coughed.

"Yes, fine, we'll use the keys. You were a lot more adventurous when you were five," the Doctor grumbled.

Ace drank her tea and ate a biscuit. She was thinking about a different five year old: one who, right now, would probably be colouring with crayons or making stickle-brick monsters in a corner of the living room in a two-up two-down terraced house in Perivale. That little girl had no idea that, right at this very minute, there was a bank account in her name that contained enough wealth to buy fifty houses, with money left over for as many stickle-brick sets as Woolworths could supply.

Funny how things worked out.

She shook her head at these thoughts and caught the Doctor's eye. "So," she asked. "Doing anything tonight?"

~~~

"Of course," Ace said nearly two hours later, across a dining table that thankfully was not so narrow she worried about knocking her wine glass over every time she shifted her weight, "this is a terrible choice for a date."

"Is it?" the Doctor asked. He seemed happy enough with the choice. Happy enough, full stop. He'd been upbeat all afternoon and evening. "Why's that?"

She glanced at him over the top of the rather scruffy menu she was reading. "I'm going spicy tonight. You're not going to want to come anywhere near me for hours."

He smirked. "Perhaps I like 'spicy'."

"I hope so. If we're both all chilli-and-garlic-ified then we can blame each other."

"That sounds equitable."

The waiter who had seated them two minutes earlier came by and asked if they'd like to order a drink. Ace felt a twinge of anxiety. She looked at the wine list, lying there on the table. She could pick it up and read it, probably even take a stab at the pronunciation of the stuff written on it, but she had absolutely no idea whether her randomly-selected choice would be suitable.

The Doctor said, "Do you mind?" She looked at him. He arched a brow then picked up the wine list.

"Go ahead," she agreed, gratefully.

The Doctor, while he perused, told the waiter, "Water, please, to share." Ace saw the waiter's shoulders slump. Maybe he was reliant on the ten per cent tip to pay his rent. When the Doctor didn't put down the wine list, however, the waiter started to look hopeful again. "What do you think?" he said conversationally. "Crisp, dry, with a hint of citrus and spice?"

"Sounds good," she agreed.

"The _Encruzado_ ," the Doctor told the waiter. "Thank you." He handed the wine list back.

The waiter, much mollified, toddled off. The Doctor went back to his food menu.

"I didn't realise you knew about wine," Ace said.

"I don't," he said, leaning over the table conspiratorially. "But I've been eating in restaurants on this planet for several centuries. I've got about twelve go-to's. It's enough to pretend."

She grinned at that. With a mischievous look she said, "Is there anything you can't fake, then?"

"Hmm. Probably not much. But!" His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered. "There are things I _will_ not fake."

"Good." For a moment, the innuendo lingered. Then her smile grew more natural. "Very good," she decided. "I don't think this will work without honesty. Even if it means we swear off the white lies as well as the biggies."

"No lies?" the Doctor protested.

"Not between us. Not _about_ us."

"Really?"

"They have a way of mushrooming," Ace said. "You say something without meaning it, then you have to keep it up because you don't want to admit you were fibbing, and before you know it you've got to keep secret notes to stay on top of the fiction you've created."

"Is _that_ how lies work?" he deadpanned. "How fascinating. I'd never have realised." Over the table he offered her a hand, as if to shake. "Hello. I'm the Doctor. Have we met?"

"Oh, sod off."

He relented with a small smile. "Honesty, then. Between us." He cocked an eyebrow. "Though it is possible I will occasionally choose a half-truth over its unredacted counterpart. There are situations even I would prefer not to exacerbate."

She almost complained that he wasn't getting into the spirit of things, before she realised that he was doing exactly that. The qualifier he'd just offered had been entirely honest, after all.

Ace said, "I'm guessing we won't get it right. Not all the time."

"That would be unlikely. But we'll get some things right, some of the time. The rest of it, we'll muddle through." He met her eyes. "The bedrock seems sound enough. I heard a rumour you and I are excessively fond of each other."

"Hmm." She hid a smile. "Just as well for you."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, what else have you got going? Terrible taste in knitwear, irascible temperament, an inability to share, and..."

"And?" he grouched.

"Those bloody spoons."

"Ah." He sniffed and leaned back in his seat. "Whereas _you_ –"

"Are more or less the perfect woman," Ace filled in for him, with a warning look.

"Oh, certainly. If the perfect woman believes that Doc Martens go with everything, has no concept of subtlety and likes explosions just a little bit too much."

She glared a mock-glare. "It is not possible to like explosions too much."

"Is that so?"

"And Docs _do_ go with everything."

"Everything?"

"Yes!"

He smiled a secretive smile and just looked at her over his menu.

"What?" she demanded.

His smile didn't fade. For some reason it made her blush. He didn't answer her, though. He just went back to perusing the menu.

Ace wondered if it was getting warm in there.

~~~

They shared a _bruschetta_ with basil pesto, tomato salsa and some kind of foreign-name cheese. It was about the best bit of toast Ace had ever eaten. The wine, just as the Doctor had predicted, was crisp and light and a bit apple-y. Ace had no patience for those people who made gurgling noises when they tasted wine and then went on about weird flavour-ideas like freshly mown lawns and bonfire night and shit. She just knew that this particular wine tasted really nice.

"Are you metabolising that as you go?" she asked the Doctor as he sipped.

"The pesto? I'm letting it do its worst."

"The wine, idiot."

He winked. "Which would you prefer? That I get nicely mellow and let my inhibitions slide, or that I remain clear-headed and, thus, have no excuses when the mood overwhelms me?"

"You're going to get overwhelmed?"

"I'm only Gallifreyan," he said with a shrug.

"Right. And Gallifreyans are prone to letting their passions get the better of them, are they?"

"Generally speaking, no. But I've had quite the day. I make no apologies for my current susceptibility."

"The relief is a bit giddying, isn't it?" she agreed.

"It is. But don't worry. I'll be an enigma again before you know it."

She leaned back and took up her wine glass. "Shame. Though admittedly, 'enigma' is a good look on you."

"Is it?" He mirrored her stance. "Do tell."

"Now you're just fishing for compliments."

"So far this evening you've been more concerned with listing my flaws."

"Only because I'm desperately trying to keep myself grounded."

"I see." His eyes glinted. "Well, your restraint does you credit. Public place, and all that."

Ace looked around at the rest of the dining area. Over to her left, a middle-aged businessman in a poorly fitting suit sat with his back to their table, dining alone: just him, his food, and an open issue of the _Evening Standard_. Behind her, closer to the stairs down from the entrance, was a couple who were hidden away behind strategically placed potted plants. Closer to the bar was a pair of older ladies, both clearly of Mediterranean extraction, who were more focused on their food than each other's conversation. As nice as this restaurant was, it was not exactly doing a roaring trade. The mid-seventies hadn't been the most flourishing economic time for the UK, Ace recalled.

"I dunno," she said. "I think I could get away with quite a bit in here."

The waiter spoiled her challenging look by gliding into place beside the table. Their privacy briefly interrupted, Ace busied herself with pouring some water into the tumbler provided, then topping up the Doctor's glass. The wine was delicious, and it was easy to embrace the notion of compromised inhibitions, but there was a grown-up part of Ace that knew she would want to remember every moment of this dinner. Better, therefore, to pace herself.

And speaking of being grown-up...

She waited until the waiter had removed their used plates and wandered off again, then she sat forward.

"Thank you," she said, with every ounce of sincerity she could muster.

He didn't ask for any clarification. He just leaned closer and said, "This wasn't a favour, Ace."

"I know. You still didn't have to do it."

"'Have to'? Perhaps not. 'Should have'? Most assuredly." He sighed. "I don't always see these things. Sometimes I need to be nudged."

"Maybe so." Ace didn't like the mournful look in the Doctor's eyes and tried to lighten the mood. "But I'm very glad I'm now able to take you out without the need to raid my stash of prized personal possessions first. So thank you."

He nodded. The mournful look became cunning. "That's right – and you never did tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"What you sold, to buy the tickets for the show in Hackney."

"I told you it didn't matter. That's all you needed to know."

"And yet you just used the phrase 'prized personal possessions'."

"It slipped out. I was distracted." She tried to look smouldering.

"By?"

"Guess."

The Doctor smiled. "At the moment, I'd guess you were distracted by how much you want to distract me from pursuing this line of questioning."

Ace sighed. Smouldering hadn't worked. "Exactly. But pretend I said something flirty."

He reached across the table, palm open, asking for her hand. She slipped her fingers into his and he gathered them up in a cool clasp. "I'll stop asking, if you'd prefer," he said. "But I am never, ever going to stop wishing I could replace the item you sacrificed."

"You can't do that," Ace said, feeling a wave of irritation.

"I can't?"

"No! If you replace it then it doesn't mean anything."

He looked confused, then he sighed his understanding. His thumb moved restlessly over her hand. "I see. The whole point was the cost to yourself."

Ace tut-tutted. "You make it sound like I'm a masochist. It wasn't that. It's just – you've given me so much. Not just things. Not just a home. Not just a universe to explore. You've given me _myself_. When you stand that up against a few material items? Doesn't really compare."

"Are we back to the imbalance?"

"No. That's not what I'm talking about."

"Good, because it would bother me if you didn't understand you've given me just as much."

She was unsettled by the depth in his gaze. Sometimes he looked so alien. She tried to laugh the remark off. "Yeah, yeah, got my uses. I'm pretty handy with the dimensional stabilisers."

"Ace," he chastised gently.

"What?" She was feeling exposed. She sort of wanted to pull her hand away.

"The things you've done. The people you've saved." The calm understanding in his eyes was beautiful and terrifying. He was the only person since Manisha who'd ever really seen her when he looked.

"The plans I've fucked-up?" she suggested tentatively.

He shook his head. "The light you shine on this jaded soul." His hand tightened around hers while she shifted. "Don't run away," he murmured.

"Then stop making me feel like I need to," she said stubbornly.

The Doctor sighed. "I know how much work it's taken for you to set down the burdens of your past. You've come so far. You should be proud. But you still don't value yourself – not truly."

"'Cause I'm more trouble than I'm worth," she whispered.

"Nonsense." His gaze was fierce. "I never met anyone more worthy of trouble, and in exactly the right amounts."

She frowned as she tried to parse the sentence. "I don't think that even makes sense."

"Makes sense to me." He tried to encourage her with a smile. "You asked me at breakfast if I know how much I mean to you. Do you believe I value you less?"

"How should I know?" she grumbled, looking at the tablecloth.

"Ace." The Doctor waited for her eyes. "What happened to honesty?"

She should have realised that pledge was going to bite her in the arse, though she hadn't expected it to happen quite so quickly. "Fine. Yes, I believe you value me less, because I can't imagine why you wouldn't. And that's not a complaint. I'm me, and you're you, and it's obvious who the amazing one is out of us two."

"It is to me."

"Stop it!" She heard her own raised voice and looked around, embarrassed, but no one else was interested in their discussion. "Look, I know you're trying to be romantic and make this all poetic and beautiful and-and _balanced_. But I'm actually okay with the fact that you're the Oncoming Storm and I'm...a delinquent with a record."

He snorted. "So that's the difference? Some jumped-up title the Draconians gave me?"

"Don't be obtuse," she said, finding some mettle.

He smiled at that, as though he liked it when she fought back. "Why am I so much more amazing, then? Because I have a TARDIS? I stole her. Because I have a regenerative cycle? So do a lot of the people from my home planet; that doesn't make me special. Because I choose to roam the galaxies and help where I'm needed? So do you. Because I've been doing it long enough to get a flashy nickname or two? That doesn't make me more amazing than you. That just makes me older."

"Your race harnessed the power of black holes. They perfected multi-dimensional mathematics. They are Lords of Time."

"Your race is several thousand millennia younger, and yet so far you've managed to produce Shakespeare, Confucius, Einstein, Mandela." He looked at her with such fondness. "Not to mention, Dorothy McShane."

"I'm just me," Ace insisted, feeling all at sea.

"And I am just me," the Doctor agreed. "But our partnership..." He frowned lightly, and his thumb stilled on her hand. "Our connection," he murmured, "makes me more."

Ace nodded slowly. She didn't buy it, not all of it, but somewhere deep inside was the glimmer of comprehension. "Me too," she whispered back.

They studied each other, sitting there in the restaurant. Holding hands. Sharing the moment.

Beside them, the waiter coughed discreetly.

"Chicken _piri-piri_ ," he announced in a voice that seemed too loud. He set an enormous oval platter down before Ace as she broke contact with the Doctor and refused to fluster. "And _caldo verde_ ," he added, placing the Doctor's dish in front of him. " _Bom apetite_."

He moved away. Ace broke the Doctor's steady gaze and looked down at her food.

"Okay then," she said.

She wasn't talking about the fragrant, spicy chicken. But the Doctor knew that, and she didn't have to explain.

~~~

In the early nineteen-eighties, after Ace's dad had buggered off, her mum had taken to working the later shifts at the salon, two nights a week. On those nights – Thursdays and Fridays as it happened – she'd leave something for Ace to have for her tea after she got in from school. It would either be beans, tinned tomato soup, or (on a good-tip week) Findus crispy pancakes.

Staying at home on her own for three hours, eating that kind of stuff, didn't appeal to Ace. This was the main reason Manisha convinced Ace to join the Thursday after-school computer club with her. Miss Birkett was cool, as teachers went, and at twelve years of age Ace didn't have other after-school options.

After computer club, Ace and Manisha would walk home along Pitshanger Lane. Around that time in the early evening the takeaway owned by Manisha's Uncle Farhaz would be opening. They'd always duck in there: every Thursday, without fail. Manisha would ask her uncle for a biryani or some such, and her uncle would tell her it was going to spoil her dinner, but he always complied in the end. Manisha would then eat a bite or two, dramatically declare that she wasn't hungry after all and hand her prize off to Ace, who would gratefully scoff the lot.

Way, _way_ better than beans on toast.

Ace had thus acquired a taste, relatively early in her life, for spicy food. There were vegetables she knew better by their Hindi name than their English one, since she only ever encountered them on takeaway menus. She liked the flavours: ginger and garlic and coriander and cardamom. And, most of all, the delicious burn of chilli.

Ace's palate had long-since been calibrated to enjoy food of the more piquant, peppery variety. The chicken _piri-piri_ served by Jordao's Grill in Ebury Square was, however, hot.

_Really_ hot.

Gorgeously, eye-wateringly, steam-venting-out-your-ears hot.

Ace finished her first chicken wing, dropped the bones she'd just stripped back to the platter, made polite use of the finger-bowl the waiter had brought over, wiped her hands and only then bothered to blink the tears away.

"Oh my god," she said. She might even have wheezed slightly.

The Doctor, who had watched her ride a chilli-rush many a time over their four year acquaintance, twitched an amused brow and finished his mouthful. "The waiter asked if you wanted mild, medium or hot," he pointed out.

"He did," Ace agreed. She sipped water, though she knew better than to drink so much that her acclimatising taste-buds got set back to neutral.

"And you told him 'hotter than hot' would be fine."

"What can I say? I'm a big show-off."

"And for the record," the Doctor added, leaning over the table, "you've got an audience."

Ace frowned and looked around. The waiter was standing next to the tiny bar located further into the restaurant, shoulder to shoulder with the barman. They were both watching her with a mixture of uncertainty and admiration. She caught their eyes, offered them a cheerful thumbs-up which resulted in two satisfied grins, then the staff went about their business and Ace happily examined the grilled chicken pieces she had left in order to choose her next fiery morsel.

"Uncle Farhaz would be so proud of me," she said, attacking a thigh.

"Who's Uncle Farhaz?"

"Manisha's uncle. Or cousin-once-removed, or something – she called him 'uncle' anyway. Owned a takeaway. Good bloke." She chewed and swallowed. "He never once let me pay for my supper, even years after...well." She frowned. "You know."

"Ah." He nodded. "And Uncle Farhaz encouraged your taste for spicy food?"

"Sort of. We never really talked. He was a man of very few words. But whenever someone went in there ordering a korma or a tikka masala or any of that stuff, he'd get this expression on his face. Sort of, 'why do I bother?' you know? I mean Uncle Farhaz was serious about his food. Then he'd hand me my madras or...oh, god, he did this stuff called chicken chettinad that was just, oh, god...anyway, he'd hand it over and shoot me this look that said, 'Not all my customers are philistines, at least.'"

"And he wouldn't take any money."

"Not once. Looked offended when I offered."

The Doctor nodded. He didn't press further, probably because he too realised that this sort-of-romantic first date vibe they had going would not benefit from a reminder of what had happened to her childhood best mate.

"How's the green soup?" she asked, changing the subject. The Doctor's choices on the menu had been unfortunately limited. It seemed the Portuguese weren't fans of non-carnivorous diets.

"The _caldo verde_ is delicious. Plenty of garlic with the kale and potatoes. And the cornbread is the perfect accompaniment."

Ace grinned. "Good. And next time I take you out to dinner I'll try to find a place that has a bit more in the way of veggie options."

"I should think that next time it's my turn."

"Right," Ace said, nodding. "We're all about the balance, after all." She speared a forkful of the lightly dressed green salad at one end of her platter, and didn't even glare at the Doctor when he reached over and pinched a couple of crisp golden fries.

They both ate for a while. The chicken made Ace's forehead bead with sweat. It was a price worth paying; the endorphin rush was fabulous. Perhaps it was as well that her fellow diner wasn't someone she needed to look glamorous for.

"I don't think I've ever actually done a proper first date," she said conversationally, after she'd exhausted her chicken and was nibbling her way through the rest of her salad.

"No?"

"No. Opportunistic snogging was the best I managed, pre-time storm. At sixteen I was a bit young for dinner-dates." She flicked him a look. "So anyway, that's my excuse."

"Why do you need an excuse?"

"You know. If I'm not doing it very well."

"Why would you think that?"

"Well, according to the movies, we're supposed to ask each other about favourite colours, or secret childhood crushes, or some other bollocks."

"That sounds infinitely less interesting than the conversations we've been having."

"Think so?" she said, brightening. "Good, then. I mean, I'm pretty sure I should have changed into a dress. And high heels. And I shouldn't have chosen a meal that makes my face start to melt. But if you're okay with this approach, that's fine."

The Doctor used his last bit of cornbread to polish his soup bowl into pristine emptiness. "I'd much rather have dinner with you than with some terrifying Ace-clone that wears high heels."

"You don't like high heels?"

"I have no strong opinion, though I'd imagine they aren't very well suited to running away from villains."

"Hmm. Good point."

"Are you concerned?" he asked. "Do you honestly think we're here, together, like this, because of some human-centric rules of social behaviour?"

She gave a shrug and tried to look nonchalant. The problem was, now she'd recognised that she sat here in these unsophisticated clothes, no make-up, face all shiny in the aftermath of a spice-fest, she was feeling a rush of self-conscious disappointment in herself.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes at her. "Ah. You're not certain. Try this one, then. Do you think I look at your face and feel joy in my hearts because your features meet the criteria for attractiveness, being well-proportioned and symmetrical?" He blotted his mouth with his napkin and set it aside.

She feigned a glare. "Saying I've got a wonky face?"

"I'm saying your face is beautiful to me because it is _yours_."

"Yes, all right, I take the point," she said. She looked at her plate and knew that there was no more room, not even for those last few fries. She placed her knife and fork together, grabbed her wine glass and settled back. "We'll just be us, and the rules can sod off."

"There's that keen tactician's mind," the Doctor approved. He raised his own glass and held it out to her. "Here's to being us."

"To us," she agreed.

They clinked, drank, and smiled.

~~~

The evening air on the road down to Chelsea Bridge dealt handily with the lingering glow of Ace's meal. The stroll was welcome. She hadn't eaten much for days on end, and then she'd had an enormous English breakfast followed by a fabulous meal out. There were probably better ways of kick-starting your digestive system.

They held hands, walking in companionable peace. Then, when Ace shivered at the stiffer breeze coming off the river, the Doctor pulled his hand free and wrapped an arm around her instead.

Once they reached the river, they walked over the bridge. The traffic wasn't busy at this late hour, but in central London it was ever present. South of the river, they ducked off the main road into Battersea Park. Here, things were quieter.

Out of the blue, Ace said, "Okay, there's something I need to ask you."

"Hmm?"

"See, if I don't ask it's going to fester."

"Then ask," the Doctor said.

She inhaled through her nose, drawing her shoulders back, gathering her courage. "The thing with Glitz," she forced herself to say. "I mean, I'm guessing you figured it out. How much did it damage your opinion of me?"

They walked in silence for a while.

"You forgave yourself," the Doctor finally said.

Ace arched her brows in surprise. "You heard that? I was out of sight and clinging to a cliff face!"

"I have rather good hearing."

"Yeah. And, let's not forget, you also have mind-powers. So you _know_ what happened. Answer the question." She sighed. "This is one of those times when honesty matters."

"Honesty," he mused, as though tasting the word. "Really?"

"Really," she agreed, though not without some sense of trepidation.

"So you want to know about my anger?" His voice was too mild for him to be truly calm. "My revulsion?" Ace went cold. "My desire to intervene?"

Ace said, "Um..." but couldn't come up with anything more coherent.

"Should I describe how, after your recent recovery, I spent days wrestling with the urge to track down the New Nosferatu and exact upon Sabalom Glitz all the many and varied flavours of retribution I knew he deserved?"

They stopped walking. Ace pulled away and turned her back, breathing to steady herself.

She heard the Doctor's shaken exhale. Then he said, "Don't ask for my honesty unless you're prepared to accept it."

Ace spun to face him. "I didn't ask what you thought about what Glitz did. I asked what you thought about me."

He fiddled with the hair above his left ear. "And my answer is that I think you made the only choice your sixteen year old self thought you could make." He held his arms out wide, the gesture helpless. "My opinion of you did not change – why would it? I didn't think less of you; I didn't think more. I've always known you're strong. Resilient. Courageous." He saw something in her expression, some glimmer of the denial she wanted to throw back, because he held up a warning hand and shook his head. "Yes, I know, you get scared. So what? We all do! Do you think it's possible to be courageous if you never know fear?"

For a while they looked at each other, breathing a little hard.

"Okay, so this wasn't the conversation I was expecting when I broached the subject," Ace eventually said. She tried a weak smile. "You really wanted to go and punch Glitz's lights out?"

The Doctor looked down at the pathway. "I wanted to do much more than that," he said, his voice taking on that dark, dangerous quiet that didn't appear often but which always unsettled when it did. As though he heard the menace in his own tone, he straightened up and huffed at himself. "Which is why I was able to wrestle the urge into submission. I abhor violence – you know this. When it beckons to me, rare as those occasions are, I wonder if I know myself at all. It leaves me perturbed."

Ace blinked. "That's why you steered clear of me, this last week?"

"Yes. Well, that's the main reason."

She nodded. "Okay. But I have to be fair about this. Glitz is not a nice man, granted, but what happened between him and me – it was _my_ fault."

"You were sixteen."

"I told him I was eighteen." She shrugged a shoulder. "Told everyone I was eighteen, actually, once I got to Iceworld. Or tried to."

"You were sixteen. A child. You admitted to me not six hours ago that you were a child when you and I met. You were on your own in a strange, terrifying place, without any resources, and you were desperate." He twitched a brow. "Glitz knew all this. As the adult, it was his responsibility to protect you from the mistake you made. The absolute minimum he should have done is turn you down."

"I needed help!"

"And he should have helped you. Without any cost to you."

"I consented. And I was of age."

"Of age, yes, by the law of the land you grew up in. Not by the laws of all lands." He stepped closer and rested a hand on her shoulder. "You made a mistake. An entirely forgivable mistake. But so far as I am concerned, Sabalom Glitz's transgression was unforgivable."

Ace shook her head. "I don't need you to do this. I don't need a protector."

"I'm not feeling these things because I think you need me to. I'm feeling them because I feel them."

"Fine. But it's just a bit, you know, sexist, isn't it? Playing the big strong man, wanting to avenge the scorned maiden?"

The Doctor's expression grew bewildered. "What's my gender got to do with it?"

Ace considered. His confusion seemed genuine. "All right, then. You're not being sexist. But for the record, if either one of us ever confronts Glitz over his behaviour then it'll be me. Not you. Fair enough?"

Because it _was_ about gender. And power. And exploitation. She saw this, now, almost for the first time. Her attempt to use sex to buy favours had distracted her. She'd been so hung up on that part of the history, she hadn't seen the whole picture.

The Doctor nodded. "Agreed."

"Your word on it?"

"Of course." He tutted. "Your agency was compromised when you were sixteen. For all my own emotional shortcomings, even I can see the harm in further denying you agency."

"Okay." She nodded. "I appreciate that. And to clarify – this anger and disgust, it isn't pointed at me?"

"Good grief, not even a little bit."

"So...we're okay?"

"We always have been."

He moved his arm around her shoulders, just a little bit hesitant as if leaving her the option to pull away, and when she tucked in next to him again they resumed their walk.

"I have nice dreams too, you know," Ace said. "Isn't all nightmare visions of horrible memories."

"I'm very glad to hear it."

She shot him a sideways glance. "Did you know I dreamed about you?"

"In Shanghai? When the TARDIS connected us?"

"No, I don't mean then. Earlier. Quite a bit earlier."

She felt the Doctor turn to look at her, but she kept her eyes facing front.

"Ah. No, I didn't know that," he said, after a slightly-too-long pause. "At least, not in the way I think you're asking."

"How do you think I'm asking?"

"You're asking whether your privacy was ever breached."

She exhaled. "Yes. I suppose I am."

"And the answer is, no, your dreams and your thoughts have always been your own." His arm hugged her shoulders a little more tightly. "But, that said, I...hypothesised."

"You hypothesised."

"I knew something had happened. Something that made you change the way you look at me. A dream – that seemed a logical theory."

"Hum," she said, non-committal.

"Were they nice dreams?" he asked.

"They were bonkers. And confusing." She closed her eyes and, all of an exhale, added, "And incredibly sexy."

"Ah. Good."

"Good they were bonkers?"

"Dreams are always a little bizarre. That's the nature of the dreaming ego – bring together thoughts and memories and desires in ways the waking mind isn't ready to process."

"My waking mind cottoned on pretty quick," she grouched.

"Maybe, maybe not. You may have been dreaming those dreams for months beforehand, only you'd never remembered them."

Ace thought about that. "It's a crap system, if that's the case. Because even when my brain decided I should remember them, I was no way near ready to process."

"Well, we aren't exactly devoid of complications, are we?" he seemed to agree. "It was always going to take time."

"S'pose," Ace said. She sighed. "I could probably have managed things much better, though."

"Quite possibly. Is dwelling on that a good use of our time and energy right now?"

They paused again in their walk, and turned to face each other. Ace smiled at the Doctor's familiar face. There was nothing about that face that she didn't love with her whole heart.

"So what would you suggest?" she asked.

He gave a slow smile. "Home time," he said.

Ace couldn't help herself. She leaned close and pressed a kiss to his mouth: cautious, barely more than chaste. He didn't reach for her, nor did he try to deepen the kiss, but his lips were soft and welcomed what she offered.

"Home time," she agreed when she'd pulled back.

"Mmm."

"But going from that kiss – not bedtime?"

"We've come some distance in little more than twenty-four hours," he said gently. "Let's give ourselves chance to breathe."

He was right, of course. As much as Ace's libido was already keen to explore a new interspecies dynamic, it wasn't so very long ago that they'd had tearful confrontations in random TARDIS locations, and Ace had given brief thought to chucking herself off a mountain.

"Slowly," she said.

The Doctor nodded. "Thank you for a lovely dinner."

"Welcome. Let's do it again."

"Let's." He grinned, stepped away and drew out his TARDIS remote. He pressed a button and then re-pocketed the device. Moments later the air began to resonate with the sound of the TARDIS engines. "My choice, next time?" he added, as the blue box coalesced into view.

"Of course. We're all about the balance."

The TARDIS solidified, and the Doctor stepped up to open the door. "Excellent," he said. "I've got just the place in mind."

~~~

It was only as Ace approached the door to her quarters that she remembered quite a lot had happened since she'd last slept in this room. The memories were enough to give her pause. She stood there, hand on the door handle. It felt as though the ghost of a panic attack hovered just out of reach. Ace sneered at the idea, flicked it the mental V's, then she opened the door and went inside.

She was immediately brought up short. Her quarters were different.

For four years, the door from the TARDIS passageway had opened into a space close to the end of her bed which was tucked into the corner of the room. Further along the wall opposite the door was where her desk had always stood. Adjacent to the doorway was her wardrobe and chest of drawers. Past them, at the far side of the room, was the doorway into her bathroom. Simple. Functional. Familiar.

Not anymore.

The room had been enlarged and divided into a more comprehensive suite. The door now opened into a sitting area, with two comfortable chairs arranged around a low table. A data-screen had been mounted on the nearest wall, looking sort of like the flat telly that Mortimus and Cai had installed in their house on Changxing Island. This part of the room was separated from the area beyond by an arch set into an interior wall, currently hung with simple beaded screening.

Ace blinked at this surprising reconfiguration. Then she decided that she shouldn't be surprised. Not really. Earlier that afternoon it had taken the Doctor almost fifty minutes to conjure up some tea and biscuits while she'd been in Clive's office signing paperwork. The Doctor _never_ needed that amount of time to procure a cup of tea. And of course, he'd known how much she'd needed a change of scenery last night.

She moved through the beads and looked at her reorganised bedroom. The three-quarter sized bed she'd slept in for so many years had been extended to the size of a generous double. It stood in the centre of the room now, away from the corners, both sides readily accessible: almost as though more than one person might habitually use it. There were twin nightstands, both fitted with posable reading lamps. Her bedside clock stood on the left hand side. Propped up against it was a tiny card: the kind you might see delivered with a bouquet of flowers rather than an entirely new bedroom. The card read:

_If in doubt, call for a friend._

Her desk remained entirely as she had left it – the Doctor knew better than to mess with her personal property – and now sat in its own well-lit alcove. Her rucksack was stored tidily to one side of the desk.

Ace went to the open doorway to the bathroom. This was bigger, too. What had once been a compact _en suite_ with loo, basin and multishower now also contained a bathtub. A big bathtub: the kind where you never had to choose between your knees or your chest getting cold. Set on a tiled shelf behind the centrally positioned filler taps was a bottle with a handwritten label. Ace went to pick it up. In the Doctor's spidery script she read:

_Lavender and Spanish Marjoram._

Ace grinned, put the plug in and started to fill the bath.

~~~

An hour later, and quite delighted by the way her skin now smelled, Ace pulled on her comfortable dressing gown and slippers and made her way back to the console room. She found the Doctor sitting on the sofa in the corner, legs stretched out along the cushions. He was reading; or at least, he was pretending to read.

He glanced up at her arrival and put the book on his chest. His expression was inscrutable. Whether he was expecting effusive thanks or a furious lecture about other people's private spaces, Ace had no idea.

"Just came to say goodnight," she said.

The inscrutability slipped, and he betrayed a glimmer of relief. "Goodnight," he replied.

She stepped up to the sofa and reached to steady herself against the furniture as she leaned over him. She pressed a kiss to his mouth, just as chaste as the one she had offered in Battersea Park. Then she pulled back.

"I think I'm going to be okay," she added.

"So do I. But you know what to do if memories press."

"I do now."

There was a pause as they looked at each other. Ace smiled a slow smile. The Doctor was definitely right about the sweet buzz of anticipation.

Enough. For now.

She stood straight and walked out of the console room, heading for bed.

~~~~~~


End file.
